Uncategorized
An 82-year-old Jewish recording legend on his film directing debut: ‘I could have been good at this’
Kenny Vance (born Kenneth Rosenberg), 82, was not quite ready to use my word “omen,” but he acknowledged that in some oblique way the destruction of his home in the Rockaways, compliments of superstorm Sandy, played a role in shaping his award-winning documentary, Heart & Soul: a Love Story.
The evocative and elegiac film pays homage to the groundbreaking and, in Vance’s view, unsung rock and doo-wop performers of the 50s. It interweaves archival footage with Vance interviewing some of its lead players, including Eugene Pitt (the Jive Five,) Arlene Smith (the Chantels) and Jimmy Merchant (Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers).
Vance is best known as the 1961 co-founder of the Billboard chart-topping group Jay and the Americans (whose signature songs included “Mia Cara,” “Come a Little Closer” and “This Magic Moment”) and, more recently, Kenny Vance and the Planotones, whose musical calling card is “Looking for an Echo.”
During his 60-plus year career, Vance has served as the musical director on Saturday Night Live (1980-’81), composed movie scores and appeared as an actor in Animal House, Eddie and the Cruisers and American Hot Wax as well as in a host of Woody Allen films, usually playing musicians or music producers.
Writing and directing a film seemed like the natural next adventure for Vance, particularly in the wake of the storm that devastated the home he had lived in for 40 years.
“The walls were all gone and most of the ceilings were gone, though the kitchen remained without a stove or fridge — looting,” he told me at the Upper East Side coffee shop where we met. “Still, I was able to climb up to my office above the kitchen to retrieve dozens and dozens of CDs wrapped in plastic bags that I had stored in my desk drawers. I took what was salvageable back to the FEMA hotel where I was staying in Staten Island and went through all of it.
“Making the film was meant to be. It was fated as if fueled by an omen,” Vance said, gently mocking my earlier word suggestion.
Tall, clad in black, and sporting sunglasses throughout our indoor meeting, he came across as very reserved, bordering on shy, yet also, paradoxically and by turns, talkative, free-wheeling and free-associative in his commentary.
Recalling his artistic mentors, many of whom appear in the film, he said, “They had a sensuality and spirituality that entered you. It’s not something you can easily describe. But as time went on, these great vocalists were seen as almost comic. They were the world of the TV show, Happy Days. But that was never what they were about.”
Their cultural significance cannot be overestimated either, Vance said. For the first time, Black and white teenagers were dancing in the same space.
“They created a youth culture that never existed before. They inspired the movies that were being made and the clothing that was worn and we’re still feeling their impact today,” he said.
Vance found that the artists he wanted to interview were eager to tell their stories, though some expressed disappointment and anger at the trajectory of their lives while others looked back nostalgically. Some voiced both sentiments.
It took close to ten years to get the film off the ground. The subject matter just didn’t resonate with investors or the festival circuit. But for Vance, it was a story that needed to be told and seen. The time was long overdue for these performers to be the stars of a film before it was too late. “They were always movie stars,” said Vance.
‘The writing was on the wall’
When I asked the Flatbush, Brooklyn native if singing had always been his career choice, he found the very concept of a “career choice” mildly amusing. His life evolved extemporaneously, at least that’s the way he made it sound.
While his mother sang on the radio and was at one time the girlfriend of Irving Fein, who would go on to manage both Jack Benny and George Burns, Vance did not grow up wanting to be a singer.
The seminal moment for him, and the scene that opens the film, happened in the 1950’s when he was a teenager attending a mega-show filled with screaming fans at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, which was known for its legendary shows hosted and promoted by DJ Alan Freed.
“I knew I wanted to be part of that,” Vance said.
In short order, he became a member of a local band, singing in the school hallways, on neighborhood stoops and even in the subways.
“No, we were not buskers,” he said. “We just went down into the subways for their echo. But when we made eye contact with other riders, there was just a connection and we all felt it. There was a simplicity, an essence, and everyone wanted to be part of it. That was spiritual. There was a band on every street corner. That couldn’t happen today.”
At 15, he launched his first vocal group, and ultimately, after a number of band iterations, Vance forged Jay and the Americans, which enjoyed a string of hits. The band performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, opened for The Beatles and played the closing act following The Rolling Stones at Carnegie Hall.
“They wanted to move The Rolling Stones out of the theater unobserved, thinking if we were on stage that would keep the audience engaged, but it didn’t work that way,” said Vance. “The audience understood what was happening and when we started to sing they were running out of the theater screaming to catch up with the Rolling Stones. In the end, we were performing for an empty house.”
Vance knew this was the death knell for Jay and the Americans and groups of that ilk. They continued to perform and produce hits, but they couldn’t compete with the new breed that appeared on every major TV show and generated unprecedented press coverage. In 1974, Jay and The Americans dispersed.
“The writing was on the wall,” Vance said. “The Beatles wore Nehru suits,” We wore dickies and sweaters.”
Vance managed to thrive doing, among other things, TV jingles to earn extra money.
He produced the soundtrack for Animal House, which sold sold more than one million copies, and the one for Eddie and the Cruisers, which went triple platinum when the movie became a cult hit. In the film American Hot Wax, he played the role of “Professor La Plano” who led a fictional band, the Planotones, which inspired Vance in 1992 to create the very real Kenny Vance and the Planotones. His son, Ladd, is a band member. “We do duets and when we sing he shares a unique version of me. And to share that with him is a unique gift,” Vance told me.
‘How could these rock guys be Jews?’
I asked Vance if he were starting out today, whether he would have kept the name Rosenberg. He said that Vance has been his last name for so long he couldn’t imagine another. “Vance was cool,” he said. “We were all Jews in Jay and the Americans. But everyone assumed we were Italian. Congratulations!”
He told me he rarely discusses his connection to Jewishness — when he was growing up, his family was largely secular, though he did have a Bar Mitzvah.
For him, Jewishness is about “doing the ethical thing,” he said. “I love that. I get it. But I’m not observant. ‘I feel like a hypocrite,’ I told a friend who said, ‘if you get it, you’re not a hypocrite’”
From time to time, though, he does attend Chabad services for what he sees as their essence, purity and authenticity.
“The Lubavitch consider us orphans from the true information” he said. “Orthodox, Conservative and Reform are man-made concepts. Did Moses belong to one of those three denominations? He was an authentic Jewish person. It was his essence. I love the Talmud. When I attend services, I study the commentaries of that week’s Parsha.”
Though he never experienced heavy duty antisemitism, being Jewish on occasion made him feel like an outsider, most pointedly, he said, in the deep south during the Jim Crow days.
“After one show, a bunch of us had gathered in one of our hotel rooms, including several cops, all with guns and sitting there in their undershirts. They were playing cards with some of the guys from the band. We were in a relaxed situation and one of them said, ‘Hey, what are you?’ and one of the guys said, ‘We’re the Chosen.’ I thought I was going to die when he said that, but then the cops started laughing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the fact that we would be Jews was so far off the radar, they thought it was a joke. How could these rock guys be Jews? It was absurd. I knew we had entered a different reality.”
‘I started to cry’
As we left the restaurant and walked down the street, Vance told me that he’d never imagined that he’d ever be a filmmaker, but now he thinks that his debut documentary may just be his most potent legacy.
“When they showed it on PBS, I started to cry in the middle of it,” he said. “I was so happy to see Eugene Pitt, Wally Roker and Arlene Smith starring in a movie that was on TV. They are stars on screen.”
“I could have been good at this,” he said wistfully, then added, “I’ve been told I belong in The Guinness World Records as the oldest director making a debut.”
Heart & Soul is available on DVD and on various streaming platforms including Fandango and Plex.
The post An 82-year-old Jewish recording legend on his film directing debut: ‘I could have been good at this’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
The Nakba exhibit and the importance of historical context
By NOAH STRAUSS When I went to the Nakba Exhibit, I was shocked, not by the contents of the exhibit but by its size. The exhibit was tiny in my eyes, and I thought the amount of outcry was excessive for an exhibit that is less than 500 words. It felt like every other day the National Post had an article about the exhibit, criticizing different aspects of it. But then I had a realization: the exhibit was never criticized because it was “too” big, but because of the contents of it. When I was toured by the curator, I actually asked her, “Where is the rest of it?” I was confused because I had been misled by the media to believe the size of the exhibit was massive.
I believe that every human being should be able to live a free life. No human should be bullied for who they are. That is not okay, and to some credit, the Nakba exhibit does cover this. But where my problem now comes into play is the fact that the museum fails to portray the full history surrounding the Nakba.
The museum is publicly funded; our taxpayers’ dollars go there. It is supposed to represent our nation and our beliefs, not take a side on history. The Museum did exactly that. It took a side, and guess what? It caused chaos.
Whenever asked why it does not show the other side of history, the museum would always say something along the lines of: our space is limited, the focus of the exhibit is solely the Nakba, etc. But to me, these are excuses, and I will call that out.
For context, the Nakba was an event that occurred around 1948 after the 1947 UN Partition Plan. The Nakba continued until about 1949. During this time, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were either forced out or left what is now Israel.
The Museum is contributing to concerns surrounding the rise of antisemitism. The Museum has failed to mention that during the same era as the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were displaced from Middle Eastern and North African countries, with many forced to leave because of their religion.
Context matters. Yes, 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, but what happened during the same era also left hundreds of thousands of Jewish people without homes. When a visitor with no historical context walks in to see what the “Jewish” people did to the Palestinians, of course they’re going to blame the Jews. Because it makes me, a Jewish person, look terrible.
In my view, the exhibit contributes to concerns about growing antisemitism by presenting an incomplete historical narrative.
But then, as Jewish people, we need to know when it’s time to move forward. We need to focus on how we can positively portray the Jewish community and show the world who we are, rather than allowing others to define us through a one-sided historical narrative.
Noah Strauss is a 15-year-old Gray Academy student
Uncategorized
Trump is still going after Palestinians in the U.S. Jews must keep protesting those antidemocratic efforts
Mohsen Mahdawi, a 35-year-old Palestinian, has been a permanent resident of the United States for the past 14 years. And as the U.S. government presses ahead with efforts to deport him over his pro-Palestinian advocacy at Columbia University, more than 1,000 Jews have come forward to defend him by signing an open letter I authored.
Why? At a time of particularly fractious division in the Jewish community over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how is it possible that so many Jews have come together in support of a Palestinian activist?
One key reason is that the government is seeking to infringe upon the rights of someone who neither engaged in acts of violence nor supported them. In July, the Second Circuit Court overruled a prior district court judge’s dismissal of the deportation case against Mahdawi, giving new energy to the government’s efforts.
Mahdawi has committed no crime; the government has not even bothered to accuse him of doing so. Instead, he simply gave voice to his belief in the necessity of freedom for his people.
Jews of all ideological stripes can and should agree that it is wrong to penalize someone for the expression of their political views. They don’t need to go far back in time to recall that such tactics have often been used against Jews themselves — in the Soviet Union to suppress refuseniks who sought to manifest their identity as Jews; in the U.S. during the McCarthy era; and, most ominously, during the dark age of Nazi totalitarianism.
In drafting an open letter defending Mahdawi, focused on the attack on his political rights, I hoped that a diverse range of Jews would be willing to acknowledge that whether they agree or disagree with Mahdawi, the government’s targeting of him represents a threat to all of us.
I know Mahdawi personally. We met at a peace-building retreat in the summer of 2024. He was an enormously compelling presence who drew people together through his preternatural calmness and clarity of purpose.
Since then, I have come to see him as a unifier, not a divider. He’s an advocate of peace, not war. And he has the potential to become a leader of enormous charisma and potential.
So why has the Trump administration devoted so much attention to persecuting a Palestinian student who has repeatedly called out antisemitism, including at a Palestinian solidarity rally at Columbia?
The sad reality is that Mahdawi, like his fellow Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, is being persecuted for the crime of being Palestinian.
The U.S. State Department came up with the logic-defying claim, in March 2025, that Mahdawi’s activities at Columbia “would have a potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” If this administration truly wishes to advance its foreign policy interests, then it should focus on reconstructing Gaza and building a framework for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, not targeting a devoted adept of non-violence like Mahdawi.
Many who signed the letter in support of Mahdawi joined in for the simple reason that they believe it is un-American to discriminate against people on the basis of their political views. Some who added their names felt, as I did , that there was another compelling reason to sign on: that Mahdawi’s activism gives the lie to the prevalent myth that to be pro-Palestine is to be antisemitic. This proposition gets buried in the raging discourse around antisemitism and Israel today.
It is essential to recognize that support for the cause of Palestinian freedom and self-determination is not the political or moral equivalent of antisemitism. It is a precondition to a world in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians live peaceably together. And it is a cause that Jews, by virtue of their own historical experience of exile, should be eminently capable of both understanding and supporting.
Mohsen Mahdawi perfectly exemplifies the position. He is fierce in his advocacy for Palestinian rights. And he is fierce in his opposition to all forms of identity-based discrimination, including and especially, antisemitism. He deserves better from the U.S., and we Jews must vigorously oppose the profound miscarriage of justice being directed against him.
David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA.
The post Trump is still going after Palestinians in the U.S. Jews must keep protesting those antidemocratic efforts appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Lawmakers seek 100-foot buffer zone around houses of worship to protect prayer goers from protests
(JTA) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a federal legislation Thursday in the House and Senate aimed at protecting houses of worship from disruptive demonstrations, following a series of protests outside of synagogues this year.
The Right to Worship Act was introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, alongside Reps. Brad Knott, a North Carolina Republican, and Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat. It would establish a 100-foot “buffer zone” around houses of worship during religious services — mirroring similar legislation recently enacted in New York.
“The First Amendment guarantees every American the right to freely exercise their faith, and Congress has a duty to ensure that guarantee is met,” Cruz said in a statement Thursday.
The legislation would also establish civil penalties for offenders and provide pathways for individuals, including state attorneys, to seek court orders and damages in federal court. While the legislation would target protesters who knowingly disrupt scheduled religious services, houses of worship would not be required to make their schedules public.
The bill’s sponsors say the measure is aimed at conduct rather than the content of protesters’ speech.
“No one should have to push through a hostile crowd or shout over a bullhorn in an attempt to pray,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which helped lawmakers draft the legislation.
It’s the latest attempt at passing federal legislation aimed at insulating houses of worship from protest, following Suozzi’s “SACRED Act” legislation, a similar bill he introduced in April but which has not progressed in the House.
Those efforts have now been joined by Slotkin, who is Jewish, and Cruz, who has often taken aim at antisemitism within the Republican coalition over the past year.
“Exercising your right to worship should not require you to exhibit particular courage as you enter your synagogue, church, mosque, temple, mandir, or gurdwara,” Suozzi said in a statement.
The New York City Council passed a local buffer zone bill in March following a series of pro-Palestinian protests outside of synagogues that hosted Israeli real estate expos. While Jewish groups and leaders heavily advocated for the measure, it also faced opposition from civil rights leaders who said it would have a chilling effect on First Amendment protections.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Lawmakers seek 100-foot buffer zone around houses of worship to protect prayer goers from protests appeared first on The Forward.
