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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Rhyming Slang For Four By Twos
Forward reader Susan Hessel writes: “I am reading a book called ‘The Report,’ a novel based on an incident in a London bomb shelter in 1943. In the book, Jews, particularly Jewish refugees, are referred to as ‘four-by-twos.’ Although this is apparently Cockney rhyming slang, I have never heard the expression before and wonder what…
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December 3, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward It has been said that New York City’s Jewish bums are worse than its gentile bums. In a way, this is true. Twenty-five years ago, when the neighborhood still had saloons on the corners, a Jew couldn’t pass by without getting smacked or insulted by a drunken Irishman. And…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘I and Thou’
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 Woocher writes about “I and Thou” by…
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Earthbound Angels
As part of a season devoted to Tony Kushner’s work, Signature Theater Company has daringly chosen to remount the epic masterpiece “Angels in America” for the first time since its Broadway run in 1993, providing an opportunity to look at the play anew, this time with an eye toward how it holds up outside of…
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Books Everything We Need to Know
On Monday, Ruth Franklin wrote about sharing a stage with Yann Martel. She 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…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘On Being a Jewish Feminist’
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, Nigel Savage writes about “On Being a Jewish…
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Books Video: What Freedom Meant in Europe
When we talk about the Enlightenment, or the Haskalah, in Europe, we have a general historical sense that all Jews were in ghettos and then the walls came down. One day pogroms, the next Einstein, Freud and Kafka. The period of time was indeed extraordinary, as Michael Goldfarb elucidates in his book “Emancipation: How Liberating…
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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…
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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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