In the News

   
   

Boca Raton, FL The International Association of Yiddish Clubs (IAYC) brought its 16th International Conference to Boca Raton for the first time last weekend and may have found a permanent home for the conference.

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Boca Raton, FL — As Hurricane Sandy ravaged homes and businesses along the northeast coast of the U.S., it's high winds and torrential rain damaged thousands of one-of-a-kind personal collections that may be lost forever.

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Boca Raton, FL — On the little-known fifth floor of FAU's S.E. Wimberly Library on the Boca campus sits a room with grayed out glass walls that run the height of the ceiling.

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Boca Raton, FL — A pile of stained, mildewed debris from Superstorm Sandy has turned into a nostalgic treasure trove for Florida Atlantic University.

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Baltimore, MD — Baltimore native Larry Chernikoff isn't especially interested in music. What does interest him greatly is preserving Jewish Heritage.

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New York, NY. — It’s a truism of traditional music that in order to go forward, you have to go back. To innovate on old material, you have to know the old material in the first place.

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Boca Raton, FL — There has been a fair amount of publicity about the donation of a significant portion of Jack Saul's music collection to the Judaica Sound Archives/Florida Atlantic University Libraries. While 300,000 items are almost incomprehensible for a private collection, my father knew everything he had and where to find it.

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Boca Raton, FL — In the larger scheme of things, the dedication of the employees of the Judaica Sound Archive at Florida Atlantic University isn't earth-shattering. It doesn't change Florida, the way oil drilling off the coast would. It doesn't build houses or end forclosures or reinvigorate the economy.

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Boca Raton, FL — The Judaica Sound Archive is accustomed to receiving large donations of old recordings. But its latest bequest, 10,000 records, arrived in an 18-wheel trailer truck.

The 7-year-old musical archive, part of Florida Atlantic Unversity's library, has a lot of cataloging to do in the next few months, because another 18-wheeler will arrive as soon as the snow melts.

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New York, NY — When it comes to singing the praises of Hanukkah, Adam Sandler's "The Hanukkah Song" has become a contemporary classic, yet his is hardly the first — nor, I suspect, the last — musical expression of affection and appreciation for the ancient holiday and its Maccabean heroes.

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Chicago, IL — They called him "the record man." And when Jack Saul died last May at the age of 86, the lifelong Cleveland resident had amassed a collection of 250,000 to 300,000 recordings.

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Washington, D.C. — Between the early 1990s and 2002, Florida Atlantic University's Wimberly Library acquired about a thousand recordings of Jewish music. In 2002 that collection became the foundation for the Judaica Music Rescue Project, founded by Nathan Tinanoff, with the goal of creating a central repository for Judaic sound recordings.

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Cleveland, OH — When Jack Saul died in May at age 86, he left a loving family and admiring friends. He also left behind a whole lot of records!

Thanks to a personal visit to the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Judaica Sound Archives in Boca Raton in February, part of Sauls collection will now find a permanent home there, where it can be enjoyed by generations to come.

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Smithsonian.com — Tucked away in libraries across the country are unexpected archives and world-class treasures.

Florida Atlantic University has a collection you can listen to: the Judaica Sound Archive was launched in 2002 by library volunteer Nathan Tinanoff, who feared the library's small sample of recordings might be dispersed and lost.

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — Maxine Schackman grew up with Jewish music always in her home in Brooklyn. When her parents died, she inherited perhaps 75 Jewish records.

And she threw them out.

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — The Judaica Sound Archives® (JSA) at Florida Atlantic University Libraries has obtained the rights to offer on its website a major collection of performance by the Bursteins, one of the most enduring family names in Yiddish Entertainment.
 

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — The Judaica Sound Archives® (JSA) at Florida Atlantic University Libraries has received a gift of 4,408 recordings, many of them rare and in mint condition, from the family of the late Dr. Harold Kahn, of Toledo, Ohio. The collection is the largest and best preserved collection received by the JSA, which houses more than 94,000 tracks of recorded music on FAU's Boca Raton campus.

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — Ladino Lives! Joe Elias performed Friday at Florida Atlantic University's S.E. Wimberly Library in Boca Raton along with guitarist Maurice Sedacca for a lecture and concert titled "Ladino Lives!" Elias, who was born and raised in the oral tradition of Ladino, the medieval Spanish language preserved by the Spanish Jews, has traveled throughout the Ladino-speaking world performing and collecting folksongs...

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — Nathan Tinanoff, director of the Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University, has brought those archives a long way. Seven years ago, Tinanoff volunteered to help Cantor Asher Herman organize a modest collection of Judaica sound recordings Herman pieced together.

When the cantor passed away two years later, Tinanoff thought he knew the fate of the music.

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — Written on the album cover of his 1951 recording of synagogue melodies, Cantor Zvee Aroni of Philadelphia wrote, "We are a musical nation and a nation recognized as a people that likes, and appreciates and gives out music."

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ROCKVILLE, Md. — At 92, Cantor Mark Levi has a new profession: zamler.

That's Yiddish for collector, explains Levi, who was cantor at Beth Tikva Synagogue (today, Tikvat Israel in Rockville) from 1962 to 1984, then at Beth Ami in Boca Raton, Fla., 1985-95. Both shuls named him cantor emeritus.

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WAYNE, N.J. — Wayne resident Mimi Lakind knew about the Judaica Sound Archives (JSA) from an article she read in The Jewish Standard some time ago. But she did not contact them until this past February, when she found herself in possession of eight or nine Yiddish and cantorial records.

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BOCA RATON, Fla. — Ben Aroni placed a record needle on the 78 rpm in front of him. Noise, nothing but noise could be heard.

Moments later, a singer’s voice pierced the static. It was that of his father, the late Zvee Aroni, a well-known East Coast cantor who as a child was known as the “Wonder Boy Cantor from Jerusalem.” After about 20 seconds, Ben Aroni stopped the record...

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BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) — The woman was in her 90s and in the process of moving to a nursing home when Rhea Bertelli met her. The woman's husband had been a cantor, leading prayers in synagogues, and she had helped by composing and arranged Hebrew and Yiddish songs. Jewish records and sheet music filled her home, but the music was in danger of being lost.

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