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Barry Manilow, 79, hitmaker with Broadway-bound show
For the full list of this year’s 36 to Watch — which honors leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers who are making a difference in New York’s Jewish community — click here.
It’s not as if people haven’t been watching Barry Manilow for over five decades now, starting in the 1970s when he recorded the first of 13 multi-platinum albums and 28 top 10 hits. Raised Jewish in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he wrote and sang commercial jingles and accompanied other artists (including a young Bette Midler) before the 1974 single “Mandy” vaulted him to pop stardom.
Manilow, 79, could have coasted on his success, filling up theaters by playing his oldies (as he is expected to do during a run at Radio City Music Hall from May 31-June 4). But in recent years he was, well, ready to take a chance again. This coming fall, “Harmony,” his years-in-the-making musical about a real-life performing troupe of Jews and gentiles who combined close harmonies and stage antics in Germany during the 1920s and ’30s, will open on Broadway.
The musical, for which Manilow wrote the songs and his longtime partner, Bruce Sussman, wrote the lyrics, was first staged in 1997, but it wasn’t until April 2022 that it made its New York debut in a National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene production at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
The play centers around the German group the Comedian Harmonists, whose tight harmonies and humorous approach made them an international sensation in the 1920s. In 1934, after the Nazis rose to power, the group was prohibited from giving concerts because two members were Jewish, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time.
The Broadway production follows a season which saw two major plays exploring historical antisemitism, “Leopoldstadt” and “Parade.”
But Manilow also wants to celebrate the Comedian Harmonists as entertainers. In an interview with the New York Jewish Week, Manilow said that he drew on his “very musical Yiddish upbringing” in writing “Harmony.” “When I left Williamsburg, I knew that world of Yiddish folk songs. I played them, I sang them, I arranged them, I knew everything about them. Jumping into ‘Harmony’ was just a big familiar musical experience for me.”
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The post Barry Manilow, 79, hitmaker with Broadway-bound show appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘The Art of the Yiddish Monologue’ and other mini-courses in Yiddish
במשך פֿונעם חודש יאַנואַר 2026 וועט ייִוואָ פֿירן די ווײַטערדיקע מיני־קורסן אויף ייִדיש:
• „די קונסט פֿונעם ייִדישן מאָנאָלאָג“, וווּ מע וועט לייענען און אַרומרעדן מאָנאָלאָגן פֿון שלום עליכם, י. לץ פּרץ, דער טונקעלער, ב. קאָוונער, משה נאַדיר, רחל ברכות און יצחק באַשעוויס. מע וועט אויל אַרומרעדן די געשיכטע פֿונעם מאָנאָלאָג אין ייִדישן טעאַטער (שיין בייקער)
• שעפֿעריש שרײַבן, וווּ מע וועט אויפֿן סמך פֿון ליטעראַטור־מוסטערן באַטראַכטן די וויכטיקע באַשטאַנדטיילן פֿון פּראָזע — שפּראַך, סטיל, דיאַלאָג, געשטאַלט און פּייסאַזש (באָריס סאַנדלער)
• יצחק־לייבוש פּרץ און זײַנע באַציִונגען מיט די נײַ־געבוירענע ייִדישע סאָציאַליסטישע קרײַזן אין משך פֿון די 1890ער יאָרן (עדי מהלאל)
• די גרויסע אַקטריסע אסתּר רחל קאַמינסקאַ, וווּ די סטודענטן וועלן לייענען אירע זכרונות אויף ייִדיש (מיכל יאַשינסקי)
• די לידער פֿון דוד האָפֿשטײן, וואָס איז מערקווירדיק צוליב זײַן צונױפֿפֿלעכט פֿון דײַטשישע, רוסישע און אוקראַיִנישע ליטעראַרישע טראַדיציעס מיט תּנכישע און מאָדערנע ייִדישע השפּעות (יודזשין אָרנשטיין)
• די ייִוואָ־גדולים אין זייערע אייגענע ווערטער, וווּ מע וועט לייענען די שריפֿטן פֿון א. טשעריקאָװער, מ. װײַנרײַך, י. לעשטשינסקי, י. מאַרק, ש. ניגער, נ. פּרילוצקי, ז. קלמנאָװיטש, ז. רייזען, י. שאַצקי און נ. שטיף (דוד בראַון)
The post ‘The Art of the Yiddish Monologue’ and other mini-courses in Yiddish appeared first on The Forward.
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Suspect at Large in Brown University Shooting that Killed at Least Two, Injured Eight
Police vehicles stand near the site of a mass shooting reported by authorities at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S., December 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Taylor Coester
Police in Rhode Island were searching for a suspect in a shooting at Brown University in Providence in which two people died and eight were critically wounded at the Ivy League school, officials said.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told a news conference that police were still searching for the shooter, who struck at Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building, where exams were taking place at the time. Officials said police were looking for a male dressed in black and were scouring local video cameras in the area for footage to get a better description of the suspect.
Smiley said officials could not yet disclose details about the victims, including whether they were students. He lamented the shooting.
“We are a week and a half away from Christmas. And two people died today and another eight are in the hospital,” he said. “So please pray for those families.”
Brown is on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island‘s state capital. The university has hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had been briefed on the situation, which he called “terrible.”
“All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt.”
Compared to many countries, mass shootings in schools, workplaces, and places of worship are more common in the US, which has some of the most permissive gun laws in the developed world. The Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more victims have been shot, has counted 389 of them this year in the US.
Last year the US had more than 500 mass shootings, according to the archive.
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Rights Groups Condemn Re-Arrest of Nobel Laureate Mohammadi in Iran
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, October 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
International human rights groups have condemned the re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.
Mohammadi’s French lawyer, Chirine Ardakani, said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested after the ceremony.
Hematifar said she and Alikordi’s brother had made provocative remarks at the event and encouraged those present “to chant ‘norm‑breaking’ slogans” and disturb the peace, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The prosecutor said Mashhad’s chief of police and another officer received knife wounds when trying to manage the scene.
CALLS FOR RELEASE
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
The European Union also called for Mohammadi’s release. “The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” an EU spokesperson said on Saturday.
A video purportedly showing Mohammadi, 53, without the mandatory veil, standing on a car with a microphone and chanting “Long Live Iran” in front of a crowd, has gone viral on social media.
Ardakani said Mohammadi was beaten before her arrest.
Reporters Without Borders said four journalists and other participants were also arrested at the memorial for human rights lawyer Alikordi, who was found dead in his office on December 5.
Authorities gave the cause of his death as a heart attack, but rights groups have called for an investigation into his death.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the crowd also chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as: “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation.”
Mohammadi, who received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison, most recently from November 2021 when she was charged with “propaganda against the state,” “acting against national security,” and membership of “illegal organizations.”
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said on Saturday that the opposition’s campaign in Venezuela was akin to that taking place in Iran.
“In Oslo this week, the world honored the power of conscience. I said to the ‘citizens of the world’ that our struggle is a long march toward freedom. That march is not Venezuelan alone. It is Iranian, it is universal,” she said on X on Saturday.