Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Crazy Is as Crazy Does
THE PSYCHOPATH TEST: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE MADNESS INDUSTRY By Jon Ronson Riverhead Books, 275 pages, $25.95 British journalist Jon Ronson has forged an estimable career out of one fascinating topic: the belief systems of kooks. His 2001 book, “Them: Adventures with Extremists,” looked at conspiracy theorists — jihadists, neo-Nazis and the like — and…
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Can We Mix Jewish and Italian?
Stanley Sadinsky of Waterford, Conn., writes: “In recent stories in the Forward about the Triangle tragedy, the victims of the fire were referred to as predominantly ‘Jewish and Italian’ immigrants. Since ‘Jewish’ is a religious connotation and ‘Italian’ refers to country of origin, this descriptive mix was wrong. What should have been said was that…
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Coneheads Conquer New York
In 1898, Etta Cone was given $300 by her brother, Moses, to buy something nice for their Baltimore family home. Their father had just died, and Moses was hoping that a new piece of furniture or some nice table linens would cheer everyone up. Etta, 38 at the time, returned with five paintings by the…
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God Is an Indie Band
I was sitting at my desk sometime last fall, when a press release from Shemspeed records landed in my inbox, plugging a record called “Darkcho.” Shemspeed was acting as promoter and distributor, but the album was of mysterious provenance. The press release, playing up the sense of mystery, went so far as to say that…
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A High-Profile Call for Marriage Equality in Israel
The fight for marriage equality in Israel now features a catchy new video starring real-life couples that are unable to marry legally in Israel. Celebrity power never hurts when it comes to calling attention to a political cause, and the newly premiered video has received media attention due to the participation of actress Hanni Furstenburg,…
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Books The Scent of Passover
On Monday, Molly Birnbaum wrote about her first writing teacher. Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: On the first night of Passover, my boyfriend and I attended a…
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Books London Book Club Keeps Arab-Israeli Dialogue Open
When the English novelist Ian McEwan accepted the Jerusalem Prize in January, he did so despite strident demands from pro-Palestinian writers to reject the prize and boycott the Jerusalem Book Fair where it is awarded. But McEwan insisted on his right to engage in dialogue with all Israelis, and argued in the Guardian that literature,…
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All Abortion Legislation, All the Time?
For a brief while, it seemed like the unending cascade of legislation that together comprise what many of us have been calling the “GOP War on Women” had slowed down from a torrent to a trickle. But then the House brought back and passed H.R. 3, the bill that was the opening salvo in this…
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Still Fighting the Good Fight
As I was leaving the Public Theater at the conclusion of Tony Kushner’s new, four-hour play, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures,” I ran into an old friend — a notable writer and social activist, a rabble-rouser of sorts who’d spent her entire adult life street fighting,…
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Books My First Writing Teacher
Molly Birnbaum is the author of “Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: The first…
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Books Brit-Lit’s ‘Magical Jewess’
As a devoted fan of BBC period dramas and a rabid consumer of British literary culture, the period between January and May when PBS airs “Masterpiece” classic is my favorite TV season. Just last week PBS finished broadcasting the brand-new relaunch of the beloved series “Upstairs Downstairs.” The new series was basically a long pilot…
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