jewish music documentaries for san francisco bay guardian

Melody machers

SF Jewish Film Festival music docs examine violin wunderkinds, Orthodox hip-hop artists, and Ben Lee

"All greatness comes from pain." The simple statement comes from Raoul Felder, brother of legendary R&B songwriter Doc Pomus, in the beautiful, crushing mediation on his brother's life, A.K.A. Doc Pomus, the closing-night film of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
 
Doc wrote some of the greatest music of a generation: R&B and early rock'n'roll standards such as "This Magic Moment," "A Teenager in Love," "Save the Last Dance For Me," and "Viva Las Vegas" — songs made famous by the likes of Dion, the Drifters, and Elvis Presley. Jewish, debilitated by polio, and vastly overweight, Doc defied expectations while struggling with a lifetime of outsider status and physical pain [...]

tikva records for san francisco bay guardian

Tradition!

A Jewish record store is coming to the Mission — briefly

Row after row of sentimental — sometimes kitschy, sometimes renowned — vinyl albums are lining pristine white walls in a small storefront, waiting for the opening of a record store that will exist for just one month [...]

urban adamah cover story for j. the jewish news weekly

Nurturing their roots: Fellows flock to Berkeley’s Jewish urban farm
It’s 9 a.m. on a brisk Monday morning and Aliza Gazek and Molly Fischman are happily plucking kale from the earth.

They laugh and chat about the day’s activities while harvesting the kale, along with chard and red-leaf lettuce, to donate to the LifeLong Medical Care Clinic. Beyond them, Berkeley’s morning commuters whiz past a chain-link fence [...]

honored: the big jewcy list

From Jewcy.com
The Big Jewcy: Emily Savage- Covering Bay Area Jews, Vegan Food, And Music With Equal Vigor
I’m normally threatened by people that share my first name, but Emily Savage has quickly managed to prove that she deserves the name as much as I do. Readers of Jewcy may know her as the Photo Editor and columnist for San Francisco’s J. Weekly, but she also regularly contributes culture writing to SF Weekly and is the San Francisco Editor at Poor Taste Mag [...]

From J. Weekly:
J. photo editor, writer on ‘Big Jewcy’ list
Jewcy.com, a website for hip young Jews, has honored j. photo editor and columnist Emily Savage with a spot on its 2011 “Big Jewcy,” an annual list of people admired by the site’s writers. The list of 88 was revealed in sections from June 1 to 15.

In addition to her work at j., which includes authoring the Jew Tunes blog at Jweekly.com, Savage is a culture writer for S.F. Weekly and the editor of the San Francisco edition of Poor Taste magazine. A longtime vegan, she also writes a column for Poor Taste under the heading “Tofu Dearest" [...]

oran hesterman for j. the jewish news weekly

The right to eat well: Access to healthy food options is Berkeley native’s dream
Growing up in two very different spots in Northern California in the 1950s, Oran Hesterman had a dual life — city kid, country kid.

During the school year he lived in Berkeley, attended Hebrew school at Congregation Beth El and was active in Young Judea. But during every school vacation and the long stretches of summer, he worked with his father, a Jewish cattle rancher, on their family farm in Mendocino County’s Potter Valley. There he herded cattle, fixed the irrigation system and learned what it meant to be a working cowboy [...]

hazon for j. the jewish news weekly

Hazon: Summertime is right time for annual food confab
For the past three years the annual Hazon Food Conference — one on the East Coast, another in Northern California — has been held in December. The time of year was chosen to attract farmers, as it’s usually their downtime [...]

bill graham exhibit for j. the jewish news weekly

Bill Graham’s American dream: Retrospective tells story of Holocaust refugee and rock impresario
As a Jewish child in Nazi Germany, Wolfgang Grajonza saw his family torn apart by the Holocaust.

His mother was taken to Auschwitz and gassed, his siblings were split — some were sent to an orphanage for safety, while others stayed behind and ended up in the camps.

The young boy went to a series of orphanages and on the Kindertransport to France, eventually making his way to New York City, with only a handful of photographs and a yarmulke on his person.

Grajonza would go on to become Bill Graham, perhaps the world’s most well known rock promoter and a beloved impresario. He’s best known for operating the legendary venues Fillmore West and Winterland in San Francisco and Fillmore East in New York City, but he also donated time and money organizing charity music events such as Live Aid [...]

sandor katz for j. the jewish news weekly

Pickling pro will talk about kraut on local tour
Growing up Jewish on New York’s Upper East Side, surrounded by stores selling sour dill pickles, Sandor Ellix Katz was almost destined to become a fermentation revivalist.

Katz is the author of two popular fermentation and food politic manifestos, “Wild Fermentation” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved,” and he has spent the last two decades farming, fermenting, teaching and writing [...]

goy passover for j. the jewish news weekly

It was my boyfriend’s first seder — but it felt new to me, too
Despite the fact that my cohabiting boyfriend and I have been a “we” for four years — two of which spent under the same roof — we had yet to attend a Passover seder together until this year.

Perhaps even more surprising: he’d never been to a seder before in his life. You see, he’s my loving goy (aware of the negative connotations, choosing to disregard), and while we’ve fried latkes for many years and visited the Contemporary Jewish Museum more times than I can count, this was his first time observing Pesach [...]

j. column: ska and torah study for j. the jewish news weekly

After a fall from grace as queen bee, I found solace in Torah and ska
Sometimes I think that an amalgamation of ska music and Judaism saved my life. Not to be overly dramatic. But looking back at the events surrounding and leading up to my bat mitzvah, now 15 years later, I can’t help but point to those two parts of my life as rescuing me from junior high hell [...]

b.r. cohn winery for j. the jewish news weekly

Sonoma rock impresario’s newest act is kosher cabernet
Bruce Cohn was just a child when he learned how to milk goats on the family farm in Sonoma County.

He would eventually find his way back to farming — sort of — by starting the B.R. Cohn Winery, but not before making a big mark on the music world as the manager of the rock group the Doobie Brothers [...]

yoni bloch for j. the jewish news weekly

Homegrown Israeli folk star is rising on high-tech scene
When Yoni Bloch performed his first Tel Aviv show nearly 10 years ago, a crowd of some 300 swarmed the club.

Then 20 years old, the Israeli singer-songwriter had expected a small audience and was shocked by the turnout. He later found out people had learned of the show thanks to his presence on the Internet. Bloch had been recording his own music since he was a teenager and uploading it to an Israeli social networking site, Bama Hadasha (“New Stage”), which predated Myspace as an online place for musicians and listeners to interact [...]

hungry for yiddish? a mitzvah project for j. weekly

Walking through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood a few years back, classically trained singer Heather Klein was struck by something [...]

hazon for j. the jewish news weekly

Former longtime Camp Tawonga director Deborah Newbrun has signed on as the new Bay Area director of Jewish environmental nonprofit Hazon.

She said the national, New York–based agency — which, among other things, organizes bike rides, Torah hikes and food conferences — represents the best of both worlds.

“It takes Jews who love their Judaism and exposes them to nature and the outdoors,” Newbrun said, “and it takes nature enthusiasts and connects them to their Judaism [...]

jaron lanier for j. weekly

Renaissance man: Berkeley resident is a musician, a Web guru and the father of virtual reality
In his home studio, surrounded by hundreds of exotic woodwind instruments, Jaron Lanier could be any other eccentric Berkeley musician. With fuzzy blond dreadlocks hanging down to the small of his back, the 50-year-old picks up a Middle Eastern oud and carefully plucks [...]

david rakoff for j. the jewish news weekly

Anxiety-ridden and seeing the glass as ‘Half Empty’
David Rakoff has dealt with paralyzing anxiety, two bouts of cancer and a childhood spent as a “freakishly small” gay boy in Toronto [...]

rock photography exhibit for j. the jewish news weekly

Icons of rock: Show at Marin JCC displays three Jewish photographers’ shots of music legends
What is it with Jewish Deadheads? Jewish rock photographer Bob Minkin, who used to work with the band, isn’t quite sure [...]

orphaned land for j. the jewish news weekly

Land of metal: Israeli hard rockers coming to S.F. club
When Kobi Farhi wore an Iron Maiden shirt to an Israeli synagogue in 1993, he suddenly realized what he needed to do.

At age 18, he was already two years into his journey as lead singer of metal band Orphaned Land. “Living in Israel, being Jewish, we should use Middle Eastern sounds in our music,” Farhi remembers thinking at that time. “If we were making American heavy metal we wouldn’t have done that.

“That’s how we became pioneers of Middle Eastern heavy metal.”

pickle column for j. weekly

Make our own pickles, save the (old) world
Most days, all I really want in life is a crunchy snack. Sure, I want happiness for my friends and family, inner peace and a healthy life, but in the meantime I’ll just settle for something crisp and tasty.

If you’ve been following my brief path of columns, you may have come to realize that I’m a music lover. What you may not yet know is I’m also food obsessed.

But thanks to a lifelong vegetarian and vegan diet, my Jewish deli choices often are limited to my own homemade versions of meatless sammies and potato salad — or, if I’m stopping by a deli counter, the traditional dill pickle [...]

street food vendors for j. the jewish news weekly

Takin’ it to the streets: Jewish vendors add deli favorites to S.F. mobile food scene
San Francisco’s Madame Bubbles was on her way to teach Hebrew school a few weeks ago when a small crowd of curious bystanders gathered around her [...]