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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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A Down to Earth Philosophy
Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought By David Biale Princeton University Press, 272 pages, $35 There is a charming Jewish tradition of taking delight in the discovery of the hidden Jewishness of celebrities. This childishly ethnocentric, but perfectly innocuous, enchantment with uncovering the Jewish origins of the famous and fabulous was…
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A Blazing Defense of Individualism
When the brilliant young Italian-Jewish philosopher, poet and artist Carlo Michelstaedter killed himself in 1910 at age 23, he must not have suspected that a century on, he and his works would be internationally celebrated. After initial neglect, a major exhibit, “Carlo Michelstaedter. Far Di Se Stesso Fiamma” (“Carlo Michelstaedter: Transform Yourself Into a Flame”),…
The Latest
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February 25th, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward “I have decided to make my living on the streets,” 16-year-old Brooklyn resident Julius Perlovitz said to a Manhattan Avenue Court magistrate. Perlovitz was arrested along with a black teenager, 18-year-old Frank Jones, on the charges that the two robbed grocery store owner Isidore Gold of $40. Perlovitz and…
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Art Shir Enjoyment Of Vocal Music
Why should Justin Bieber have all the fun? Instead of the teenage pop sensation chanting “Baby, Baby, Baby,” why not the words “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel,” sung to the same tune? One professional Jewish a cappella group is doing just that. Six13 is part of a growing number of Hebraic harmonizers springing up across America in…
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Books The Stranger’s Notebook
On Monday, Michael David Lukas shared a list of his top 10 favorite Jews of all time. 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: In my last post I…
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Books How to Sacrifice a Lamb and Other Important Information
For many Jews and non-Jews, American Jewish culture is defined by stereotypes such as the pushy mother, the shleppy father, chopped liver swans, too much food (“just in case…”) accountants, doctors, and holidays in the Catskills or Florida. But a new generation of Jews are so hip, Americanized and assimilated that they are not even…
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Lulu’s Back in Town
‘Mlle. God” opens with an aging painter named Melville wooing the sexually liberated Lulu. Annika Marks’s bravura performance channels the almost divine sensuality from Franz Wedekind’s “Lulu” plays and G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film “Pandora’s Box,” upon which Nick Kazan’s new work is loosely based. Unlike those dramas, though, the play’s goal is not simply sensual…
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Mind Your ‘L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E’
MEMOIR AND ESSAY By Michael Gottlieb Faux Press, 170 pages $16 Poets of the Language School (aka the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group, tendency, faction or sociological phenomena — the occasionally rancorous debate continues) have risen to become the dominant avant-garde of modern American poetics. The first generation (including Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Bruce Andrews, Lyn…
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JDating — Without Losing Your Mind
In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Forward interviewed Michelle Cove, the editor of the online Jewish women’s magazine 614, the author of the new book “Seeking Happily Ever After: Navigating the Ups and Downs of Being Single Without Losing Your Mind (and Finding Lasting Love Along the Way),” and the director of a documentary of…
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Waking Up to Who You Are
From Alvin Hall of Myrtle Beach, S.C., comes this query: “One of the birkot ha-shachar, ‘the blessings of the dawn,’ that are recited every day in the morning service is “Barukh ata adonai eloheynu melekh ha’olam she’asani yisra’el,” the standard English translation of which is ‘Blessed are you O Lord our God, King of the…
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Books Tunisia, Whitesnake, and My Top Ten Favorite Jews of All Time
Michael David Lukas’s first book, “The Oracle of Stamboul,” 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: I’ve been thinking a lot these past few months about…
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