Yossi Banai was a beloved Israeli musician and actor, known for his trademark combination of musical performances and dramatic interpretations. Banai was born in Jerusalem November 5, 1932, in the Mahane Yehuda neighborhood. It is a vibrant market area, known for its colorful “shuks,” or markets. The Banai family was recognized among neighbors for its artistic talent, and young Yossi was no different. From a small age, Banai was performing along side his brothers, Gavri, Ya’akov and Haim, who …More

Chaim Potok’s 1972 novel, “My Name is Asher Lev,” resonated immediately with both Jewish and non-Jewish booklovers alike. The beloved story of a young man’s pull to the art world, despite his Hassidic upbringing, is still popular today, enjoying a resurgence thanks to a stage adaptation currently running off-Broadway. “Asher Lev” the play takes much of what Potok put into his original work, breathing life into the tale through imagery, costuming, and spoken word. Jspace …More

Lanford Wilson wrote the Jewish psyche so well, you’d be forgiven for assuming he was Jewish himself. Of course, the late playwright grew up as an out youth in the rural Midwest, so he may have understood a thing or two about feeling an outsider. “I’ve been all over the country, and there is New York City, isolated neighborhoods in Boston, and believe me, the rest is all the South,” Wilson’s character Matt Friedman says, earning appreciative laughs from a Manhattan audience last …More

Many child actors have struggled to be taken seriously as performers after wrapping up their young, breakthrough characters. Think Steve Urkel, Screech, and 80 percent of the original "90210" cast. However, one Hollywood name you won’t be seeing on a “Where are They Now?” special is Daniel Radcliffe. Or, for people still dreaming the Hogwarts dream, Harry Potter. While spending 10 years as a do-gooder boy wizard certainly has the makings for a type-casted actor, Radcliffe has continued to expand …More

Sophie Tucker, sometimes called the "First Lady of Show Business" and the "Last of the Red Hot Mamas," is a Jewish cultural icon. Tucker was born Sonya Kalish in 1886 in what is now the Ukraine. Her family immigrated to Connecticut when she was just a baby, escaping persecution against Jews. When her parents opened a restaurant in their new Hartford hometown, Tucker began singing in the eatery for tips. It was just the first in a careeer of entertainment jobs. Tucker made a name for herself as a young woman …More

A revival of the Tennessee Williams’s “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” opened Thursday in New York. But the reviews coming in for star Scarlett Johansson’s performance in it have not exactly been scorchingly positive. Scarjo plays Maggie, the title “cat” in the 1955 Pulitzer Price-winning play about love, relationships, greed, and death set in the plantation home of a cotton tycoon in the Mississippi delta. This latest version, directed by Rob Ashford, relies heavily on Johansson. Not …More

Robert Gluck, JNS.org Oscar Hammerstein II was raised by Scottish Presbyterians, and the only time he ever entered a synagogue was to deliver eulogies at Temple Emanu-El on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. But according to his grandson Oscar Andrew (Andy) Hammerstein III, his Jewish heritage influenced Oscar II’s work—for which he won eight Tony awards and two Academy awards as a lyricist on musicals including “The Sound of Music,” “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma.” This …More

Celia Adler has a connection to the New York theater world that is fundamental to the Jewish artistic movement at the start of the 20th century. Born in 1889, Adler was just six months old when she made her stage debut as a “prop” child in the arms of her very own actress mother, Dina Shtettin Adler. By the age of 4, Adler had an actual written role in “Der Yidisher Kenig Lear,” a Yiddish production of “King Lear.” That link to Yiddish theater would blossom into a full-blown …More

Al Pacino is back on Broadway, and he’s playing a Jew. It seems to be an old standby for the iconic actor, who’s turn as Shylock in 2010’s “Merchant of Venice” is still talked about in hushed, reverent tones across Manhattan. That play’s most famous monologue, in which Shylock famously decrees, “I am a Jew…if you prick us, do we not bleed,” could very well have been spoken by Pacino’s most recent incarnation, as beleaguered salesman, Shelly “The …More

The holidays are coming, New Yorkers are complaining about the economy, and everywhere you look people are talking about some sensation called Sandy. It isn’t real life: It’s “Annie.” Yes, everyone’s favorite redheaded orphan has returned to Broadway, bringing with her a cast of young ladies who can belt, tap and melt the hearts of Daddy Warbuckses everywhere. Jspace recently sat down with Emily Rosenfeld, the 8-year-old dynamo currently starring in the production as …More

Eleven deaf-blind men and women slap and punch the dough on stage. As the audience enters “Not By Bread Alone,” the pioneering show by the Nalaga’at Center coming to NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City this January, they are immediately immersed in the near universal process of making bread. As the dough rises and bakes, the wafting smells provide a common timeline for audience and actors, who can neither see nor hear those for whom they perform. But this troupe, …More

Cult comedians David Wain and Michael Showalter are set to showcase their play “Sex (a.k.a. Wieners and Boobs)” for one-night-only on October 29 in New York City. Written in 1998, the play is about Jack Greenberg, the new sheriff in Teaneck, and his struggle to shut down crime boss Tad Theaterman while trying to land his love interest Hillary. Both founding members of the 90’s comedy troupe “The State,” Wain and Showalter have gone on to bigger endeavors in the comedy world. Wain …More