Beyond the Pale

A rebroadcast of our Jan 16 2011 show on Jews and Metal, with a tribute to the cult rock doc Anvil. Host Jenny Romaine talks with violinist and composer Alicia Svigals and with freelance journalist Mike Rubin.  Svigals, a founder of the Klezmatics and of the all-women band Mikveh, is considered by many to be the world's foremost klezmer fiddler. Rubin writes about music for The New York Times, Tablet and other venues. Here's the list of what we played today: Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love, Van Halen Master Race Rock, The Dictators Hot Rails To Hell, Blue Oyster Cult Sister Ray, The Velvet Underground Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy, The Ramones 20th Century Boy, T. Rex Strutter, KISS Hatikvah, Marty Friedman Avinu Malkenu (Our Father Our King), Mogwai Correction:  We've since learned that the melody for Hatikvah is not by Grieg.  According to Wikipedia, it has been attributed to a Roumanian folk song, and to a 17th century Italian song.  Smetana     

The NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) failed miserably during Hurricane Sandy. We talk with two journalists (Michael Moss of The New York Times and Sasha Chavkin, a freelance reporter for The New York World) whose investigative stories in recent weeks shed new light on NYCHA's failures. Roberta Grossman, producer and director of Hava Nagila: The Movie, explains why this familiar tune is a musical Zelig. The film opens on March 1st at Lincoln Plaza Cinema. And scholar and journalist Daniel Mendelsohn talks with us about his latest collection of essays, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture, just out from New York Review Books. 

Israel went to the polls on January 23rd. Hosts Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman talk with journalist Max Blumenthal, who covered the elections for The Nation and argues the results were a victory for Israel's pro-settler right. Israel plans to build 3000 new settlement homes in the E1 corridor, which would connect Jerusalem to the settlement of Maale Adumim, splitting the West Bank in half. In response, Palestinians erected a tent encampment on the site of the planned settler homes--private Palestinian land. They called it Bab al-Shams ("Gate of the Sun"). We speak with Palestinian activist Abir Kopty.  Mohammed Fairouz has garnered international attention for his melding of middle eastern modes with western musical structures. BBC news has called him “one of the most talented composers of his generation." Fairouz joins us in-studio.

Host Eve Sicular has put together a wide-ranging selection of 20th and early 21st century music that she dubs the "something old, something new, something balkan, something jew-ish show."  Her selections include music related to the documentary, Cabaret Berlin: The Wild Scene, showing this week at the NY Jewish Film Festival; Sly and the Family Stone;  new albums,  Bad Old Songs (Daniel Kahn and The Painted Bird), and Forshpil (Forshpil); Molly Picon;  and little-known Jewish composers Mikhail Gnesin and Alexander Krein, who are among the earliest Jews admitted to the music conservatories of Czarist Russia.

Revolutions, once and future. Co-hosts Alex Kane and Lizzy Ratner kick off the show with an interview with Frederick Stanton, the director of Uprising, a new film about the first heady days of the Egyptian revolution.   Then, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark interviews Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav about his bold, new(ish) book, Beyond the Two State Solution. Translator and journalist, Dimi Reider, joins the conversation.

It looked as if the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense was fated to follow a familiar pattern: the prospective nominee's name is leaked, the right-wing piles on her/him with a series of smears, the wounded candidate withdraws from the fray. Today's host, Esther Kaplan, talks with Ali Gharib, senior editor for The Daily Beast's Open Zion, about why the Hagel nomination seems to be breaking with the pattern.  And what is there for liberals to like, if anything, in the Hagel nomination? For four years Jewish Week reporter Hella Winston has indefatigably reported on the failure of prosecutors in New York City and New Jersey, notably Brooklyn District Attorney Hynes's office, to aggressively prosecute cases of sexual abuse and evidence of a pattern of intimidating and discrediting victims within ultra-orthodox communities.  Winston talks with Beyond the Pale about two recent developments:  the conviction of Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed counselor from the Satmar community, for repeatedly sexually abusing a girl in his care and the filing of charges by the Brooklyn DA against several men for attempted interference in the case; and the disclosure by The Foward newspaper, of a decades long cover-up of sexual abuse accusations against two teachers at Yeshiva University's high school for boys, a bastion of modern orthodoxy. You cannot buy an assault weapon in New York State, but that hasn't deterred New York's economic development officials from subsdizing the manufacture of assault weapons in the state.  Beyond the Pale talks with Nathaniel Herz, a reporter with The New York World about his discovery (with the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting) that New York ranks second nationally in the size of its aid to these manufacturers. 

On this last Beyond The Pale we talk with J.J. Goldberg, editor at large at the Forward, the national Jewish weekly newspaper, about the emerging trends in the Jewish news this past year.  And with Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, about the highlights of the past year for JVP and their plans and the challenges they'll face in 2013.  

December 23, 2012 - Guns, Geller, and Refugees. As the nation mourns the death of 20 children and 7 adults in Newtown, Connecticut, we speak to anti-gun advocate Andy Pelosi about the scourge of gun violence, with a particular focus on New York City. After hate-maven Pamela Geller posts 50 new anti-Muslim ads across the New York transit system, we speak to anti-racism advocates Cyrus McGoldrick and Donna Nevel about the long tentacles of Geller's Islamophobia. And finally, as Syrian government forces bomb the Yarmouk refugee camp, we talk Ahmad Diab, the Syrian-born son of Palestinian refugees, about the fate of Palestinian refugees caught in the crosshairs of the Assad bloodbath.          

Today's show is hosted by Eve Sicular and features the music of Jacob Garchik, Michael Winograd, Metropolitan Klezmer,Alicia Svigals and Marilyn Lerner and the glorious, late Adrienne Cooper (with pianist Joyce Rosenzweig). Don't miss the December 22nd concert in tribute to Adrienne Cooper--for details click on Upcoming Events to the left. Eve also talks wth the Swiss multi-media artist Elianna Renner about her research-in-process into the activities of Jews in late 19th and early 20th century international prostitution rings; and  with Alicia Svigals about her forthcoming performance, with Marilyn Lerner, of music she composed to accompany a screening of the 1918 silent film,The Yellow Ticket, on January 10th, at 8:30pm, at the Jewish Film Festival and Lincoln Center. The Yellow Ticket  tells the story of a young Jewish woman (played by Pola Negri) who hides her identity in order to study medicine and is coerced into prostitution in order to pay the rent.

Even though we've removed the fundraising pitches from the audio of today's show, you can still contribute to WBAI's emergency fund raising drive in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  Just go to our online donation site: www.give2wbai.org.  And better yet, become a WBAI Buddy by becoming a monthly sustaining member at www.wbai.org. 

UN General Assembly overwhelmingly votes in favor of recognizing Palestine as a non-member observer state.  CNN/ORC poll on Israeli military action in Gaza reveals deepening partisan divide in U.S. Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson weighs in. On the streets and in the courts, activists push back against continuing work on Spectra and Rockaway Lateral high pressure natural gas pipelines in NYC. We talk with the Sane Energy Project's Owen Crowley and CARP's Martha Cameron. Beyond the Pale contributor and civil rights attorney Alan Levine talks with us about NYPD's aggressive surveillance of Muslim businesses, associations, and places of worship.

November 25, 2012: From Gaza to the Rockaways. As the sound of missiles and gunfire dies down in Gaza and southern Israel, co-hosts Alex Kane and Lizzy Ratner interview Yousef Munayyer and historian Mark Perry about the fall-out from the latest Gaza conflict. "This was a multi-directional attack on all different parts of the Gaza Strip," said Munnayer. And, almost a month to the day after Superstorm Sandy slammed into the East Coast, Occupy Sandy activist and journalist, Laura Gottesdiener, weighs in on New York's grassroots recovery and the possibility of a just rebuilding effort: "We're very much trying to organize toward a new type of recovery, one that wouldn't further accentuate and reinscribe inequalities..."      

As many listeners know, because of damage during Hurricane Sandy, WBAI has been unable to broadcast from its studios at 120 Wall Street.  We're told that the building is finally accessible, but it's still not certain when we'll have access to key infrastructure (e.g., telephones, internet, ISDN line).  So---thanks to the generosity and engineering skills of  Jeannie Hopper, host of WBAI's Liquid Sound Lounge---today's Beyond the Pale was recorded earlier this week at the studios of Clocktower Gallery Radio, ARTonAIR.org. Host Jenny Romaine talks with Evan Kleinman and Saul Sudin, the co-producers of the new film Punk Jews, which makes its NYC debut at Manhattan's JCC (West 76th Street and Amsterdan Avenue) on Tuesday December 11 (shows at 7 and 9pm).  For tickets, and further information about the film, click on punkjews.com. "Punk Jews" follows an underground Jewish community expressing their identity in unconventional ways that challenge stereotypes and break down barriers. From Hassidic punk rockers to Yiddish street performers to African-American Jewish activists, "Punk Jews" shows an emerging movement in New York City of Jews asserting their Jewish identity, defying the norm, and doing so at any cost." For up-to-date information and commentary on the Israeli assault on Gaza go to: the institute for middle east understanding,  972mag.com, btselem and  electronicintifada.net.

Beyond the Pale is back on the air at last, though WBAI has still not been able to get back into our studios on Wall Street.  Hence this week we decided to rebroadcast two still relevant interviews that we aired back in November and December 2007.  We talk with: Avner Cohen, author of Israel and The Bomb about the origins of the long standing U.S. policy of "don't ask don't tell" towards Israel's nuclear progam and subsequent U.S. policy toward India, Pakistan and Iran.  His most recent book on the subject was published in 2010 by Columbia University Press: The Worst Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb. Naomi Klein, author of  The Shock Doctrine about how conservatives exploit natural disasters, wars and other crises to forward their agenda of radical privatization. Read Naomi Klein's Superstorm Sandy: a People's Shock? in The Nation.

Beyond the Pale will be pre-empted during the balance of October during WBAI's fall fund raising marathon.  But this Sunday we're on air with a two-hour fund raising marathon special featuring spokesmen for Breaking the Silence, the Israeli veterans who, since 2004, have gone on the record with their personal experiences to expose the truth of Israel's agenda in the West Bank and Gaza. We've posted our interview (just click on details below) and stripped out the on-air fundraising.  If you haven't contributed to this fall's drive, you can still support WBAI and Beyond the Pale by clicking here.