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Yallah: Haim Botbol

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Yallah: Haim Botbol

The concert was opened by the warm-up act 3yin (pronounced ‘eye-in’), a sextet of London-based musicians playing Iraqi, Egyptian and other Arabic or Judeo-Arabic music on Western and Arab instruments. Did I say warm-up? More like ‘heat-up’, as this enthusiastic group of…

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United nations

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United nations

Since the Israeli-Canadian violist Rivka Golani first became aware of the Blackfoot – the First People of Canada – she has been inspired by their history. She has performed several concerts in their honour in Canada and has composed pieces, with their permission, that reference Blackfoot…

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Rendezvous in Bratislava ★★★★

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Rendezvous in Bratislava ★★★★

“We had the biggest party in the darkest time,” declares one of the gloriously evocative numbers in Miriam Sherwood's self-styled ‘grandad cabaret’. Rendezvous in Bratislava is a love letter to her late grandfather Jan ‘Laco’ Kalina, a Slovakian Jewish satirist, joke collector, cabaret creator…

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Jewish Book Week Family Day

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Jewish Book Week Family Day

BELIEVE IT OR SNOT, 11AM Get the day off to a slimy start with zoologist Dani Rabaiotti, who’ll be sharing fun – if gross – facts about nature’s gunk. Find out what on earth “hyena butter” is and whether or not you’d dare eat it, see if you can guess just how much goo a hagfish can spew…

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A history of Jewish jazz

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A history of Jewish jazz

“Music is the most beautiful language in the world,” proclaimed Weinberg’s gramophone shop in the 1920s. This formed the basis of one of their adverts in a Yiddish language newspaper once sold on the streets of Whitechapel. At the time, swinging dance bands were…

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Falling in Love Again ★★★

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Falling in Love Again ★★★

There’s a pleasing synchronicity to Ron Elisha’s take on the abdication of Edward VIII and how no less a femme fatale than Marlene Dietrich might have tried to change history by getting him to ‘fall in love' again. The play arrives onstage just as royals seeking to abdicate their duties…

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Interview: Patrick Marber

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Interview: Patrick Marber

“I consider myself a Jewish writer, like all my heroes: Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Woody Allen,” said director Patrick Marber in an interview in 2015. Now he is directing a play from one of those “heroes”, Tom Stoppard – a play which might be…