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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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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For the Modern Sholom Aleichem, Click on This Blog
A literary talent is stalking the web, but his name is a mystery. A Yiddish blogger, who has been compared to leading writers of the past two centuries goes simply by the pseudonym Katle Kanye, meaning “rod cutter” or “thick headed.” Combining the vernacular of the Yiddish street with the language of rabbinic literature, Katle…
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Piaf’s Paramour, and Much More
The French singer-songwriter Georges Moustaki (born Giuseppe “Yussef” Mustacchi, to a family of Greek Jews in Alexandria, Egypt) is still mainly remembered outside France for his brief, stormy love affair with Édith Piaf. Although Moustaki penned the lyrics for Piaf’s resounding 1959 hit “Milord,” the song’s raucous, honky-tonk aura is far from Moustaki’s own ruefully…
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Flowers That Spring in the Blum Have Nothing To Do With the Case
British-based Zionists were heartened to hear that their celebrations of Israeli Independence Day could include a visit to the most important solo show by an Israeli artist in London this year. By moving the closing date of “The Land of Light and Promise: 50 Years Painting Jerusalem and Beyond, Ludwig Blum (1891-1974)” from April 24…
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A Man, a Dog and an Author
MOTTI By Asaf Schurr, Translated from Hebrew by Todd Hasak-Lowy Dalkey Archive Press, 169 pages, $13.95 It is not obligatory for an Israeli novelist to double as national prophet, but it helps secure publication in the United States, where translations constitute less than 3% of books. Writing about and against public injustice, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav…
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And Rains in Their Due Season
It rained fairly heavily in Israel the week after Passover, and since anything more than a few drops is rare here after April, it was probably the year’s last downpour. Real rain is unlikely to fall again before late September or October, and there are years in which the first autumn showers don’t come until…
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Taking Time To Make Time
Time fascinates me, personally as well as professionally. For one thing, I don’t have enough of it. For another, one of my favorite historical monographs — A. Roger Ekirch’s “At Day’s Close” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2005) — just happens to be a study of night. Drawing on folktales, material culture, ecclesiastical regulations and bedtime…
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May 13, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Although all evidence in the shooting death of the well-known skin specialist Dr. W.R.C. Latson points to suicide, suspicion has fallen on the doctor’s secretary, 21-year-old Alte Marhelka. After Latson was found dead, the building’s janitor told police that Marhelka had been with the doctor earlier in the day….
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‘Rabies,’ a Horror Film With Bite
In covering the Tribeca Film Festival this year, I’ve marveled at just how many times I’ve read the description of the 2010 film “Rabies” (“Kalevet”), by writers/directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, as “Israel’s first horror film.” Really? Because isn’t the coverage of the whole mess of the Arab-Israeli conflict an ongoing horror film in…
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Books Testifying for the Holocaust
Last week, Deborah Lipstadt wrote about eerie anniversaries and Hannah Arendt. 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: This blog entry appears during the time that we mark Yom…
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Dr. Cyclops Is Back
George Szell: A Life of Music By Michael Charry University of Illinois Press, 464 pages, $35 One of the most enduringly terrifying abusive father figures among great conductors is being honored by a revival of interest. George Szell was nicknamed “Dr. Cyclops” by his Cleveland Orchestra musicians, after a 1940s horror movie villain, and a…
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