This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Circumcision: The Box Set
George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., has occasioned a fair amount of discussion of late. When it comes to our colonial patrimony or birthright, though, the Seixas family circumcision set should, by rights, give the presidential missive a run for its money. From the mid-18th century through the early years of the…
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Books Judging Gary Shteyngart and Art Spiegelman’s Taste in Books
What is on Gary Shteyngart’s mind? Only a clairvoyant would know. It’s much easier to surmise what’s on his bookshelves. The Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village has set up a display in which well-known writers take turns exhibiting their favorite books. In June, it looked as though a bookcase in Gary Shteyngart’s living room…
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Books Making it ‘True’
On Tuesday, Evan Fallenberg explored writing elaborate lies with convincing details. Today, he further explores how much of his fiction is “true.” His 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 Latest
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July 15, 2011
100 Years In The Forward An Italian and a Jew stood before the magistrate. The Italian said: “This murderous Jew tried to kill me.” Apparently this was true, and so the Jew was arrested. But it wasn’t the whole story. The two are neighbors. The Italian has children who make a great deal of noise…
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Wimpels Made Simple
Sidney Jacobson of Chester, N.J., writes: “My wife recently came into possession of a curious, bannerlike cloth about 8 inches wide and 8 feet long, and with the assistance of two rabbis, we determined that it was called a Wimpel. Yet although it was apparently a presentation made to my wife’s grandfather at his circumcision…
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Love Is Talk
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF PAUL CELAN & ILANA SHMUELI Translated by Susan Gillespie Sheep Meadow Press, 280 pages, $19.95 To honor the lovers’ letters between Paul Celan and Ilana Shmueli, this review is conducted as a written conversation between two of our reviewers who are (married) lovers. Widely considered one of the most important postwar European…
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Books News of the Carrot, Not Pain of the Stick
BREAD TO EAT AND CLOTHES TO WEAR: LETTERS FROM JEWISH MIGRANTS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY By Gur Alroey Wayne State University Press, 256 pages, $29.95 You may think you know why your ancestors made their way to this “Golden Land,” but scholar Gur Alroey’s “Bread To Eat and Clothes To Wear” demonstrates that the…
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Being Where He Deserves To Be
Multiple exile was the singular experience of 20th-century Jewish musicians. Fleeing from fascist Europe, Soviet oppression and war, they sought audiences capable of giving them shelter and appreciating their talents. A key example is Vienna-born conductor and composer Georg Tintner, who worked in quasi-obscurity in New Zealand, Australia and Canada until late in life, when…
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The End(s) of Irony
Yael Bartana’s film trilogy “…and Europe Will Be Stunned” turns national representation at the Venice Biennale on its ear. The 40-year-old Bartana, a rising art star, is an Israeli representing Poland, where she is neither a citizen nor resident, thereby breaking the Biennale’s traditional format. The gesture nevertheless is fully in line with the artist’s…
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Books Elaborate Lies With Convincing Details
Evan Fallenberg is the author of “When We Danced on Water: A Novel.” His 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: I am probably a writer of fiction (as opposed…
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Her Life Was Saved by Rock ‘n’ Roll
When I was in yeshiva, I had, crammed between my bed and the wall of my cockroach-infested dorm room, an AM/FM radio and cassette player on which I listened to contraband music such as R.E.M., Simon & Garfunkel and Pink Floyd. Say what you will about my taste in those days — though I make…
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