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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How Gay Rights Teaches Us Torah
Most religious affirmations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been “negative” ones: They argue that Leviticus (and Romans and Corinthians) doesn’t really prohibit homosexuality, or that ancient prohibitions should be set aside in the age of the iPad. But isn’t there a “positive” case, as well — that biblical religious values support the…
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Finding Purpose in Life’s Second Act
Life stages are artificial, argues Marc Freedman, the 53-year-old social entrepreneur dubbed “the voice of aging baby boomers” by The New York Times. “There was no adolescence before 1904,” Freedman points out before launching into an explanation of his nonprofit’s raison d’être: creating institutions and public policies geared toward boomers who may be past retirement…
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On Belief
“Everything is in the hands of Heaven except for reverence of Heaven” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berachot, 33b) In his commentary of this week’s portion, Lech Lecha, Avraham Burg takes issue with the concept of faith. Weaving together late antiquity Midrash, Maimonides and his own hermeneutics, Burg charts his namesake, the original Abraham, as he who…
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Channeling Kafka, Amos Oz Weaves Weighty Tales
Scenes From Village Life By Amos Oz Translated by Nicholas de Lange Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 182 pages, $22 If Franz Kafka were a happily married, 70-year-old Israeli family man, he wouldn’t be Franz Kafka. He also wouldn’t be Amos Oz. He might, however, have written something quite like Amos Oz’s new book of connected stories,…
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Helping Haiti, Long After the Quake
At the age of 23, Oscar, a college student in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was looking forward to a professional soccer career. Then came the January 2010 earthquake that changed his life. The campus building he was in collapsed — most of his friends were buried under the rubble — and Oscar, who asked to be identified…
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Books Talking to Aharon Appelfeld in Pennsylvania
“I’m not looking at Aharon…” “He’s looking at you.” It’s not often that professors of literature have a chance to speak about a writer’s work in front of him. This interchange between Iris Milner, of Tel Aviv University, and Yigal Schwartz of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, took place at the International Conference on…
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Books My First Writing Group: The Internet
On Monday, Gloria Spielman wrote about the University of the Ghetto. Her most recent book, “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime,” is now available. Spielman‘s 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:…
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Helping Stunned Victims of Tsunami
When a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Eastern Japan earlier this year, the staff at Fuji Youchien kindergarten in the small town of Yamamoto followed well-rehearsed regulations. They quickly took all the children outside to the parking lot. After a few minutes, with the ground still shaking and rain pouring down,…
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Sepia-Tinged Take on Jascha Heifetz
In the new documentary “God’s Fiddler,” on the life of Jascha Heifetz, director Peter Rosen succeeds in creating the first film biography of the violin virtuoso. The film succeeds as a sort of classical parallel to the VH1 series “Behind the Music,” using Heifetz’s own home films and interviews with artistic colleagues to flesh out…
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Looking Back November 11, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Detroit is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. It also has a Jewish community of about 20,000 that is on the rise. Currently, Detroit’s Jewish ghetto centers on Hastings Street, a typically dirty Jewish street dotted with little shops and lunchrooms. The street itself wouldn’t be…
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Charity Is ‘Rock’ for Immigrants
In the five years leading up to the deal freeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli nation adopted his family as its own, sharing its pain and campaigning for its cause. Meanwhile, the family of Pavel Slotzker was all but forgotten. Shalit’s comrade, Slotzker was a victim of the same cross-border raid in which militants abducted Shalit,…
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