April 5, 2009

Broadcast Date: 
Apr 5 2009

The New York State legislature passes an on-time budget; Rabbi Arthur Waskow on the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Seder and the Blessing of the Sun, a Jewish holiday that comes once every 28 years; plus Jonathan Freedman on his book Klezmer America.

Episode segments
  • New York State Budget
    New York Politics
    Liz Krueger was first elected in 2002 to the New York State Senate where she is currently Vice-Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and Chair of the Select Committee on Budget and Taxation.  Senator Krueger has made reforming and modernizing NYS's governmental and electoral proceses and tax policy a central goal of her legislative agenda.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and Nan Rubin

    For 20 of the last 21 years New York State has failed to pass an on-time budget.  This year, they did, barely and only by detaching funding for the MTA.  We talk with Senator Liz Krueger about some of what's been achieved--and what remains to be done.

  • Freedom Seder's 40th Anniversary and the Blessing of the Sun
    Religion, Holidays, Jewish Life, Obituaries
    Rabbi Arthur Waskow is the founder, in 1983, and director of the Shalom Center, which brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursing justice, healing the earth.  Rabbi Waskow was also creator of the Freedom Seder, which celebrates its 40th aniversary this year.
    Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and Nan Rubin

    The Shalom Center's Rabbi Arthur Waskow remembers his dear friend Barbara Bick and talks with us about the first Freedom Seder in 1969, the new Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth and the Blessing of the Sun and its 28-year cycle.

  • Klezmer America
    Music, Arts & Culture, Literature
    Jonathan Freedman is a Professor in the Program in American Culture in the Department of English Language Art and Literature at the University of Michigan.
    Dalia Kandiyoti teaches in the English Department of the College of Staten Island, CUNY, and is a Visiting Professor at York University in Toronto.

    Contributor Dalia Kandiyoti talks with Jonathan Freedman about his book Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity and Modernity.