By Masha Leon
“To speak of Cynthia Ozick is to speak of magical storytelling,” said Francine Klagsbrun, a board member of the Jewish Book Council, before presenting Ozick with the council’s lifetime achievement award at its 60th annual National Jewish Book Award ceremony, held March 9 at the Center for Jewish History. Ozick’s response was a literary dissertation leading off with: “Lionel Trilling, one of the most influential literary critics of the century… and the first Jew to have been officially appointed professor of English at Columbia University, is remembered in particular for two Jewishly oriented statements, one more shocking than the other:
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By Masha Leon
“A good newspaper.. .is a nation talking to itself,” said Jane Eisner, editor of the Forward, quoting playwright Arthur Miller at the Forward Association’s March 8 “Looking Forward” fundraising gala, held at Mandarin Oriental.
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By Masha Leon
It was raves and roasts at the February 28 Museum of the Moving Image’s salute to Alec Baldwin”, held at Cipriani 42nd Street. It was also an adieu for the museum’s founding director, Rochelle Slovin, who has led the institution for the past 30 years.
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By Allison Gaudet Yarrow
From the Borscht Belt to poop jokes, Jewish comedy comes in many forms, and Michael Showalter has a little of both in his repertoire. The comedian, who wrote and starred in the films “The Baxter” and “Wet Hot American Summer,” has lent his many gifts to his new “humoir,” “Mr. Funny Pants” (Grand Central Publishing), which plumbs his “latchkey” suburban upbringing via self-deprecating humor. He spoke with the Forward’s Allison Gaudet Yarrow about his self-conscious comedy and the Jews who dig it, and about his spiritual encounter with a mitzvah van.
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By Masha Leon
“You are a man of books and stories,” said Antonin Baudry, cultural counselor of the French Embassy in New York, as he introduced Philip Gourevitch, recipient of France’s Order of Arts and Letters, at the January 31 ceremony held at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. “You are a voice not only for France, but Europe… a correspondent in Asia, Europe, Africa, Siberia, Cambodia… the Iraqi War…. You first worked for the Forward, before working as a freelance writer.”
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By Masha Leon
I met Tullia Zevi, who died in Rome on January 22, at 91, when she came to New York for the October 7, 1996, Appeal of Conscience Foundation dinner honoring then prime minister of Italy Romano Prodi. She invited me for tea at Hotel Elysée, the East Side boutique hotel where she was staying. Since I had visited Rome two months earlier, our conversation focused on the current status of the Italian-Jewish community.
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By Masha Leon
“Ignored by historians… the general public, even by the Jewish people, are the heroic deeds of Jewish rescuers,” Hidden Child Foundation vice president Rachelle Goldstein told the nearly 200 attendees of the organization’s seventh International Rescuers Day program, held January 19 at the Anti-Defamation League’s headquarters. “Today we honor two Jewish women, Renee Wiener and Andree “Poumy” Moreuil, who would not shrink and tremble in their hiding places.”Read More
By Masha Leon
Not a single candy wrapper, cough nor cell phone interrupted the New Yiddish Repertory’s January 13 reading of “Shaylok, oder der Koyfman Fun Venedig,” a Yiddish adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” at the Center for Jewish History. The evening was, in Broadway speak — a smash hit.
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By Raphael Mostel
It turns out that the world’s most famous bicycle race, the Tour de France that just completed its 2010 run, has an unlikely origin: It was a direct result of the notorious Dreyfus Affair.
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By Nathan Burstein
Maybe he’s not such an expert on natural born killers, after all.
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