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
What We Believe
On Monday, Darin Strauss wrote about wrestling with faith. His 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 done an informal poll — I admit, it’s very informal — among Jews…
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After Drama With Wiesel, ‘Madoff’ Opens on Stage
Two years down the pike, much of the Sturm und Drang surrounding Bernard Madoff and his elaborate Ponzi scheme has become more nuanced. Nowadays, Madoff’s behavior does more than just provoke shock and indignation; it raises questions about Jewishness, human dignity and, above all, morality. These questions are embodied by the situation of Nobel Laureate…
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Notorious Anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Jews Who Read Him
Fifty years after his death on July 1, 1961, French modernist author and ferocious anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline is still causing controversy. Last January, an attempt by France’s Ministry of Culture to “celebrate” Céline on this anniversary ran aground after noted Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld pointed out that Céline was not merely the author of such…
The Latest
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Lucette Lagnado’s Second Memoir of Cairo and Brooklyn Concentrates on Her Mother
The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, From Cairo to Brooklyn By Lucette Lagnado Ecco/HarperCollins, 416 pages, $25.99 No happy ending immediately follows an exodus from Egypt. Readers of the Tanach and of the prizewinning debut memoir by Egyptian-born journalist Lucette Lagnado, “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit” (Ecco/HarperCollins), know this….
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Books The Great Media Non-Conspiracy
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone On the Media By Brooke Gladstone, Illustrated by Josh Neufeld W. W. Norton & Company, 158 pages, $26.00 An icon of many a household’s Sunday listening, Brooke Gladstone and her show “On the Media,” with Bob Garfield as co-host, has for my (pledge) money the liveliest program on National Public…
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Reaching Youth of Israel’s Periphery
In the past decade, Israel’s high-tech industry has thrived, creating exciting opportunities for high school graduates. But, with investment and employment heavily concentrated in the country’s center, the spoils have been unequally shared. For youngsters in Israel’s so-called periphery, it is double jeopardy: Not only do they not enjoy the same employment options as their…
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Books Darin Strauss on Faith
Darin Strauss’s most recent book, “Half a Life: A Memoir,” is now available. His 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: Faith is a private issue. At least, I consider it…
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Hebrew Immersion Another Option at Charter Schools
Every morning at the CommuniKids Preschool in northwest Washington, D.C., children are greeted with hola, not hello, and they banter and sing in Spanish rather than English. The preschool has another site in Northern Virginia where parents can choose immersion in French as well as Spanish. At the French Maternal School in Georgetown, 2- to…
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Was Amy Winehouse ‘A Nice Jewish Girl’?
From Massapequa, N.Y., comes this e-mail from Stephen Listfield: “What is the origin and current rationale of the expression ‘nice Jewish boy’ or ‘nice Jewish girl’? The latest example I’ve come across in the media is the repeated reference to Amy Winehouse as a ‘nice Jewish girl who blah, blah, blah.’ Yet I don’t know…
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The Kittel as Maternal Love
“She is not worried for her household because of the snow, for her whole household is dressed in scarlet. ” (from ‘Eshet Chayil’ – Proverbs 31:21) This kittel explores the mother as dressmaker. When she clothes her children she is providing not just physical protection, but also nurturing and caring for them, even when she…
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The Empty Nesters
What worries and expectations do Jewish parents face when sending their kids to college? Molly Ritvo polled parents and found that some valued schools with large Jewish populations and active Hillels, while others felt confident that their budding scholars’ Jewish upbringing would set the tone for their college lives. Unsurprisingly, most parents want college-bound sons…
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