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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Understanding the Myth and Music of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan in America By Sean Wilentz Doubleday, 400 pages, $28.95 Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 By Greil Marcus PublicAffairs, 512 Pages, $29.95 Choose almost any critical approach — biographical, political, religious, literary, musical, philosophical or historical — and chances are it already has been used to try to explain Bob Dylan and…
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Books Holes
Ruth Franklin is the author of “A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction.” 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: Ah, fall — the season of hot…
The Latest
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Great Jews Since Bible Times’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Jonathan D. Sarna writes about “Great Jews Since…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘The House of Rothschild’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Dave Weinberg writes about “The House of Rothschild”…
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Books Civil Rights and Cheap Burials: Remembering Lawyer Robert Treuhaft
Human rights lawyers who spend their lives defending unpopular clients like Vietnam War draft resisters and free speech advocates can expect mostly indirect posthumous tributes. Such is the lesson of a friendly new volume, “Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford” by Leslie Brody, an English professor at the University of Redlands, out in…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Will Schneider writes about “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: The Torah
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Cheryl Weiner writes about the Torah. Every week,…
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A Wild Beast Of a Novel
Dolly City By Orly Castel-Bloom, Translated by Dalya Bilu Dalkey Archive Press, 176 pages, $13.95. Dan Miron, one of Israel’s best-regarded literary critics, once said that he sees in Orly Castel-Bloom’s work “a shout of resistance, a scorn for social norms and public taste.” In Castel-Bloom’s novel “Dolly City” — first published in Israel in…
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Time to Get Out of Your Apartment
How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less Without Leaving Your Apartment by Gregory Levey Free Press, 288 pages, $25.00 How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden Vertigo, 208 pages, $24.99 Although Gregory Levey briefly worked as a speechwriter for Ariel Sharon (a job he…
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Je t’aime, Ahbal
When, early in November, Ofer Eini, head of the Histadrut, Israel’s national trade union, publicly called defense minister Ehud Barak an ahbal for illegally employing a Filipino housekeeper without proper work papers, he was using a word you won’t find in standard Hebrew dictionaries. You’ll find it in Arabic ones, though — and in Israeli…
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Teaching Poetry No Longer
The Poetry Lesson By Andrei Codrescu Princeton University Press, 128 pages, $19.95. Creative writing programs over the past half-century have endorsed the maxim “Write what you know,” so why don’t we have more novels about creative writing programs? Departmental meetings, thesis advisories, workshop tensions, suicidal poets, deferred student loans — the material is ripe for…
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