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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YidLit: Admiel Kosman
Sitting down with Israeli poet Admiel Kosman and his translator Lisa Katz (who is a poet in her own right) in the Forward’s podcast studio felt less like a formal interview than a conversation in a dimly lit cafe, extending for hours into the night. And it likely would have extended — if the producer…
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Books How a Holocaust Survivor Escaped Into Comics
Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer By Trina Robbins, Illustrated by Anne Timmons and Mo Oh Graphic Universe, 96pp., $7.95 This is quite a remarkable little book, by quite an artist-writer duo, on quite a subject. Miriam Katin, Holocaust survivor and comic artist herself, reviewed “Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From…
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Salon Preview: Awaiting the Female Steve Jobs
The Salon celebrates its 15th episode this month, with panelists discussing New York City’s gender-segregated buses; the prospect that the ‘next Steve Jobs’ will be a woman, and Beverly Siegel’s documentary about the plight of Orthodox women ‘chained’ to unwanted marriages. Siegel, technology writer Joanna Stern, and communications strategist Jo-Ann Mort join the hosts, Forward…
The Latest
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Books Publishing a Real Life Old Fashioned Book
Matthue Roth’s latest book, “Automatic,” is now available. 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: Here’s the thing about being both an author and a blogger: It makes you…
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Books Jewish Jesus, Now and Then
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Not since the 1939 debut of Sholem Asch’s “The Nazarene: A Novel Based on the Life of Christ,” has so much media attention been showered on the Jewish perspective on Jesus and the New Testament. The recent release of “The Jewish Annotated New Testament,” an Oxford University Press publication…
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Tony Kushner’s Tumult and Triumph
I half expected to see the picture of Tennessee Williams that sat on Tony Kushner’s office desk. I didn’t expect the picture of Pep Guardiola, the youngest and most successful manager in the history of Barcelona Football Club, to be sitting right next to it. A present from the late poet Thom Gunn, its presence…
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Secrets of Ben-Gurion’s Leadership
Ben-Gurion: A Political Life By Shimon Peres and David Landau Schocken, 240 pages, $25.95 The most revealing conversation that Shimon Peres ever had with his mentor, David Ben-Gurion, was perhaps his first. Peres was a young activist in Ha’Noar Ha’Oved, the Labor Zionist youth movement, when he asked the powerful and charismatic chairman of the…
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‘Yahweh’ Should Not Offend Anyone
Reader Peter Siegel is upset by my November 11 column, titled “From Bono to Yahweh.” (Online it was called “How Yahweh Got Its Verbal Vibe Back.”) He writes: Why in the world would your article and title include a spelling of the name of G-d that offends many, many Jews from Orthodox to Reform, who…
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Survivor’s Belated Insight Into Holocaust
The Muselmann at the Water Cooler Eli Pfefferkorn Academic Studies Press, 215 pages, $59.95 Since the passage of time plays tricks with memory, memoirs written in proximity to the Holocaust ordinarily are given greater credence than later works. One would imagine that a survivor’s account written more than 65 years after the Holocaust could not…
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A Twist of Israel in Pennsylvania
Ronen Koresh has tears in his eyes. Dancer Melissa Rector has just finished a run-through of a searing solo from Koresh’s “Theater of Public Secrets,” dancing both on and around a table. The cozy second-floor dance studio with the burgundy curtains is silent, the dozen onlookers — dancers and visitors — stunned by raw emotion…
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Books Bringing the Lower East Side to Life
Earlier this week, Chris Moriarty wrote about writing her new book and songs of hope and failure. 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: One of my main goals…
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