Orel Family

Bruce Springsteen, Pittsburgh, May 19, 2026 Bruce Springsteen brought his "No Kings" / Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour to Pittsburgh Tuesday evening. As nearly everyone paying attention knows by now, Bruce has stopped varying the setlist: He's chosen a core 27 songs and, except for a single song at a single show, hasn't changed a single selection for the past 13 shows. Given that as a backdrop, it may be fair to ask -- at least somewhere in the recesses of my mind -- why I'm making a full day trek and an overnight, etc., to see a show that I already traveled across the country to see less than 5 weeks ago . So, a few things here: It's the same setlist every night, but it's a hell of a focused setlist. Would I tweak it? Sure. Some of the song pairings have been around for decades, and there are  some other entries that would work. The passion that Bruce is bringing to this set, night after night, is off the charts. Lori said this show was better than...

Bruce Springsteen, Phoenix, April 16, 2026. All pictures and video by Matthew Orel. Bruce Springsteen is angry. And boy, oh, boy, is he holding on to his anger. Last night, through a bit of clever planning with a family trip, I managed to be in Phoenix for the "Land of Hope and Dreams - No Kings" tour.  It's also, for the most part,  a "no surprises" tour. Last night was the third consecutive show with the same setlist. To some fans, setlist variation still matters. To them, I'd say this: Get over it. Going in, even those of us in "blackout" mode basically knew what to expect. Bruce has been very vocal about his rage over the current administration, culminating in his sudden January release of "Streets of Minneapolis"  and the subsequent announcement of this 20-date E Street Band tour. The show is positioned as a rhetorical call to arms, with Bruce directly stating the purpose multiple times during the show: "This American tragedy ca...

This past Saturday, I returned home from services -- as a mourner I go every day now to say kaddish -- to relax, check my phone, and so forth. Lori wasn't feeling well and was sleeping, so I went to another room. The first thing I saw on my phone was a post from a friend who doesn't post very much, quoting the famous Martin Niemöller poem, along with a video appearing to show an ICE encounter. My friend is in Philadelphia. I wondered, "is something going on in Philly?" But then I saw the word "Nicollet" in the background of the video and realized he hadn't shot the video, it was from Minneapolis. As I watched a little more carefully, I realized I was watching a murder. I turned on the TV. For the next several hours, more numb than I could have foreseen, I watched as the news came in, More videos. Totally predictable preposterous statements from DHS head Greg Bovino and later DHS head Kristy Noem defending the actions of their agents, and labeling the vic...

November 11, 1972 January 6, 2026: Thank you, Cantor Wallach. Thank you, everyone, for coming this morning. Some of you I haven’t seen in many, many years. Thank you all for coming. A special thank you to Rose and Fayona, nurses who helped take care of my mom in her final weeks. I just have a few notes, I’m not going to take very long, I didn’t formally write anything but I sent myself a few notes that I’d try to say in a few minutes and that I thought might be worth hearing. I’m going to start with a brief story from something my mom and I experienced a few years back. I was back here 1990, it happened to be Tisha B’Av, which is, to those who are familiar, it’s one of two Jewish fast days on the calendar, the other, of course, being Yom Kippur. For whatever reason, I was here on a break from my job in California that day. My mom wanted to go to Kings to get some groceries for later on. It’s not one of those non-work days so you can do that, except of course Kings was sampling cookies,...