Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee based his new fictional narrative film, Taking Woodstock, on the memoir of the same name by Elliot Tiber (née Teichberg), who helped run his parents’ run-down Catskills resort and became the local fixer for the staging of the truly epochal 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair.
The film follows the adventures [...]

You’ve probably heard about Jewish rappers like Matisyahu — and the Beastie Boys. How about Drake?
Here’s a taste of DeScribe and Y-Love, a funky Jewish duo. Y-Love has gotten some press of late; DeScribe is news to me. — Mordecai Specktor

Haaretz reports today that a prisoner swap deal for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas in 2006, could be concluded prior to the High Holidays.

Gilad Shalit

Sources told Haaretz that “Syria and a number of uncited states have agreed to take in prisoners who Israel wants exiled from the West Bank and Gaza.”
The [...]

Gertrude Berg was an “influential yet largely forgotten figure in the annals of both American broadcasting and American Jewry,” Michael Fox wrote in his review of Aviva Kempner’s new documentary, Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (8.21.09 American Jewish World).
The film examines the legacy of Berg, who was the creator of the beloved radio and TV character [...]

Bernard Madoff, architect of the multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme that wiped out the assets of many Jewish families and organizations, reportedly is dying of cancer.
Now serving 150 years in the federal prison at Butner, North Carolina, sources told the New York Post that Madoff says he does not have much longer to live.

Bernard Madoff (Photo: [...]

Gay couple will celebrate their commitment to each other next year in Conservative synagogue
By STEVEN ROSENBAUM
Temple of Aaron Synagogue will become Minnesota’s first Conservative synagogue to perform commitment ceremonies for gay men and lesbians in its sanctuary.
The St. Paul shul’s decision follows the guidance of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the umbrella group of [...]

Twenty classmates gather at Byerly’s for 73rd reunion
By ERIN ELLIOTT / Community News Editor
When Lordean Stattine Wick retired more than 20 years ago, she bought a computer and taught herself how to maintain a database of more than 900 names — contact information for her classmates from North High School in Minneapolis, class of 1936.
“We [...]

Come for the smoked whitefish, stay for the beautiful beaches

By MORDECAI SPECKTOR

The historical marker on Madeline Island informs visitors that the largest of the Apostle Islands, located in the west of Lake Superior, was known to its Ojibwe inhabitants as Moningwunakauning, the Home of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. A short ferry ride from Bayfield, [...]

Miryam Ghermezian Academy, in Bricelyn, Minn., will host grand opening on Sept. 6
By CARLY ETTINGER
Located in the southern Minnesota community of Bricelyn, the Miryam Ghermezian Academy (MGA) will be the first residential high school for at-risk Jewish girls in North America. This newly founded school will be a safe haven for teen girls who cannot [...]

In this edition of the Jewish World, we have a rabbinic viewpoint on the health care reform debate, which seems to be getting out of hand in certain locales. On the opposite page, Rabbi Alexander Davis traces the priority placed on medical care in the Jewish tradition. We knew that a lot of Jews become doctors; [...]