Shoga Speaks

Sam and Daniel are in Israel, circa 1969. They are on a kibbutz, learning Hebrew in the morning and working for their room and board in the afternoon. Sam follows Daniel in his effort to deepen his Jewish identity. They go to Mount Tabor, site of a battle between the Israelites and the Canaanites, spend a weekend at a Chassidic yeshiva where Daniel is ardently proselytized by a rec

America 1968. Everything was up for grabs. All passion and creativity seemed to gush from the counterculture. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven." I was young, 18, and enrolled as an undergraduate in the fourth year of the great experimental campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. The spirit of the 60s was everywhere, in our music a

What's in a bedtime story? More than you might imagine. As we were growing up, my father introduced his version of imaginary creatures, the goops, into our household and family life. Created as negative role models to teach manners to Victorian children, the goops first saw life in books of moralistic doggerel published in 1900 and after. "But it was their bad behavior that led my

Dr. Philipson interviews playwright and lesbian activist Jewelle Gomez about the life of the famous blues singer, Alberta Hunter, and the play Jewelle wrote based on that life.Website: www.shogafilms.com;Instagram: shoga_films;Facebook: facebook.com/shogafilms;Twitter: twitter.com/shogafilms

"I have concluded from the melancholy nature of my subsequent development that the artifacts hung up on a child's wall can have a permanent effect on his life."So begins the essay on the role the Art played in my formation, an evolution spanning Southern California, France, the groovy Sixties, Africa. "Still Life" will reveal the malefic influence of "the original Joe Vogel," plumb

Christian, Jew, or undeclared, all are subjected to the music, the rituals, the legacy of the Victorian Christmas which exercises an annual month-long grip on American culture. How can one not be warped, influenced, sentimentalized by this slow-motion avalanche. We can take "Christ" out of Christmas, but we cannot remove it from our hearts.Website: www.shogafilms.com;Instagram: sho

Meet Doris Hale, the most intimate and important African American that my famlly knew and trusted, in her own words. Dr. Philipson conducted and transcribed the interview back in the early 90s. In anticipation of releasing the manuscript of the family memoir, we present certain chapters as podcasts performed by voice actors. "Skinny" was recorded and mixed by Joyce Licorish.Website

The topic is an exposition of my diffuse yet distinct identity as a non-practicing Jew, as the son of non-practicing Jews, and as the great-nephew of the once-famous Rabbi David Philipson, one of the first Reform rabbis to be educated and ordained in America. Where does Shylock fit in? You know who he is; everyone knows who he is. If he figures in your mental landscape, whether you

Dave Drexler of the San Diego's Jazz88.3 FM conducted an interview with Dr. Robert Philipson when his documentary, "Body and Soul: An American Bridge" was selected as the closing night offering of the San Diego Jewish Film Festival and was watched by over 1000 people. Philipson discusses the composition of the song "Body and Soul" by Jewish composer Johnny Green in 1930. He then us

In 2019, the Netflix adaptation of the August Wilson play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, spread her fame to tens of thousands of Americans. The film starred Viola Davis as the bisexual blues diva and enshrined Chadwick Boseman's final performance before his untimely death to cancer.In a blog post I wrote about the film at the time, I prophesied that Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman wou