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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Doubling Dutch
Native Dutch speaker Gerda Elata-Alster writes in response to my column on “shtick,” which spoke of Yiddish words in American English sometimes taking on — or, as I put it, “intermarrying with” — non-Jewish meanings: “Many Yiddish words have been integrated into Dutch, too, although I can’t remember any ‘intermarriages.’ Unfortunately, many of these words…
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Books Columbia Prof Uses Math To Create World Peace
Getty Images The Five Percent: Finding Solutions To Seemingly Impossible Conflicts By Peter Coleman Public Affairs, 288 pages, $27.99 One of the great challenges of our time is finding ways to resolve intractable conflicts that have proven persistent, destructive and resistant to change. A groundbreaking new book by Columbia University professor Peter Coleman argues that…
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A Mournful Reminder of Bialik
Originally published in the Forward February 14, 2003. The first words intoned at last week’s memorial in Houston for the fallen astronauts of the Columbia space shuttle were in Hebrew: “Acharei moti sifdu kacha li” After my death, thus mourn for me: There was a man, and see — he is no more. This man…
The Latest
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Books What Are the Three Weeks, Anyway?
Dr. Erica Brown is the author of “In the Narrow Places,” a daily meditation for each day of the Three Weeks. Her 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 recently…
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A Portrait of the Con Artist as Albanian-American
MY NEW AMERICAN LIFE By Francine Prose HarperCollins, 320 pages, $25.99 Francine Prose’s light-hearted new novel, “My New American Life,” could be renamed “A Portrait of the Con Artist as a Young Immigrant.” In this case, the artist of sorts in question is Lula, and she is a weaver of tales, a woman making sense…
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Books Behind ‘Farm 54’: The Making of ‘Houses’
Earlier this week, Galit and Gilad Seliktar shared the making of the first story and the second story in “Farm 54.” In their final post, they share the background behind “Houses,” the third story in their graphic novel. Galit and Gilad Seliktar’s posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the…
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Books The Best Way To Play Charades
“The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City” By Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti Faber and Faber, 174 pages, $13 “The Chairs Are Where the People Go” is the name of a chapter in Misha Glouberman’s book, as well its title. It is also one of the…
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July 22, 2011
100 Years In The Forward Has anybody seen Abie Levitt’s wife? The Levitts moved with their son to Portland, Ore., from New York a few years ago. Not long after, Rosie Levitt started making noises about how the family should move back to New York. Abie didn’t want to go back — he was making…
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Engineering Epic Poetry
‘A’ Louis Zukofsky New Directions, 846 pages, $24.95 ANEW: COMPLETE SHORTER POETRY Louis Zukofsky New Directions, 384 pages, $18.95 Accepted to Columbia University in 1920, 16-year-old Louis Zukofsky was planning a career in engineering. Instead, the son of Lithuanian immigrants Pinchos and Chana Zukofsky became one of America’s leading Modernist poets and co-founder of the…
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Intense Psycho-Dancing
WHEN WE DANCED ON WATER By Evan Fallenberg Harper Perennial, 272 pages, $14.99 Israeli writer Evan Fallenberg has now twice asked readers to sit inside the heads of difficult people and give them the unconditional love that their most intimate relations struggle to fully provide. In both of his novels — the critically acclaimed and…
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The Triumph and Tragedy of Counter-Cultural Judaism
HOLY BEGGARS: A JOURNEY FROM HAIGHT STREET TO JERUSALEM By Aryae Coopersmith One World Lights, 400 pages, $18 ‘Holy Beggars” is a much anticipated account of San Francisco’s House of Love and Prayer, which served as an important home of the Jewish counter-culture from 1967 to 1971, and its spiritual leader, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. It…
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