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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Expanding Freedom in Today’s World
Nourish the Hungry By Ruth Messinger Whether we’re eating bread or matzo, legumes or leafy greens, our relationship to food is something more than 1 billion people around the world can’t imagine. Why? Because they are chronically hungry, enslaved to a global economy that prevents them from having the food they need to survive. The…
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The Kitniyot Question: What’s a Convert To Do?
The question of kitniyot presents an interesting challenge for the converted. Kitniyot — literally, “little things” — is the umbrella term used for the specific foods not eaten during Passover in the Ashkenazi tradition, including rice, corn, beans and lentils. It’s a practice whose origins are unclear; but what is clear is that this anti-legume…
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From South Africa, an Activist’s Recipe Recalls the Power of Food
The early years of Nelson Mandela’s life as an organizer and revolutionary were marked by cross-cultural experiences centered around the table, even when such alliances were frowned upon politically. The Indian South African community, and the solidarity it showed in passive resistance campaigns, deeply influenced Mandela’s later mass actions and encouraged Mandela and his colleagues…
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From Egypt, a Traditional Dish Links to an Ongoing Struggle
At the start of 2011 the world watched as the Egyptian people overthrew longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. It is not often that we can so easily honor the Haggadah’s instruction that “In every generation one must look upon himself as if he personally has come out of Egypt.” The Jewish community of Egypt dates back…
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Jerusalem: Easter, Passover
Poet Stanley Moss, who talked to the Forward about poetic and religious practice, reads the following poem, which he wrote, at his Passover meals. 1 The first days of April in the fields — a congregation of nameless green, those with delicate faces have come and the thorn and thistle, trees in purple bloom, some…
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April 22, 2011
100 Years Ago in The Forward The Jews of Manhattan’s Lower East Side were shocked to discover that Christian missionaries who have posted themselves in the neighborhood in order to “save” Jewish souls have been converting local children without their parents’ knowledge. The main location for these conversions is on Second Avenue between Houston and…
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Building the Perfect Beast
TWENTIETH CENTURY JEWS: FORGING IDENTITY IN THE LAND OF PROMISE AND IN THE PROMISED LAND By Monty Noam Penkower Academic Studies Press, 407 pages, $65 THE UNIVERSAL JEW: MASCULINITY, MODERNITY, AND THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT By Mikhal Dekel Northwestern University Press, 304 pages, $29.95 ‘Very few people know who I am,” Salvador Dalí is reputed to…
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She Got Moving Images Moving
The end of this year’s presentation of the Academy Awards marked the final wrap on the 30-year career of Rochelle Slovin, founding director of the Museum of the Moving Image. In an industry that immortalizes art, the museum defines Slovin’s legacy — bringing audiences behind the magic of the moving image. And now, with the…
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Questioning the Questions
Ruth Fath of Princeton, N.J., asks a timely question: “Does the Yiddish word kashe, as in the fir kashes, the ‘Four Questions’ asked at the beginning of the Seder, come from the same root as the Hebrew word kasheh, ‘difficult’? Our rabbi points out that in Hebrew the Four Questions are known as arba ha-kushyot,…
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Books Patricide, Photography, and Audrey Hepburn
On Monday, Austin Ratner wrote about Hillel sandwiches. His first book, “The Jump Artist,” is the winner of the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. 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…
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The Four ‘Sons’ as Characters From ‘Glee’
On a Tuesday night in April, millions of people will gather together for the tale of four Jewish children, each of whom embodies contemporary Jewish consciousness in a different way. The evening is filled with song, multiple narratives and insights into Jewish identity. I’m talking, of course, about the award-winning Fox television series “Glee.” For…
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