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
Harvey Pekar, Our Mensch in Cleveland
Jeff Newelt is editor of the Pekar Project and the forthcoming “Harvey Pekar’s CLEVELAND.” If I had my druthers I’d do a universal search/replace on the Internet, find all instances of Harvey Pekar, who died one year ago at age 70, being lazily labeled a “curmudgeon,” and switch each misnomer to “mensch.” It’s not that…
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A Queen Honored, a King and a Jester Premiered
The offerings of the 33rd Moscow International Film Festival, which ended earlier in July, were like the dishes on a dinner table in a hospitable Russian house: generously overflowing, but served in no apparent logical order. It was no surprise to those invited, then, that some of the films in the festival’s many programs and…
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The Portrait of a Renegade British Rabbi Struggling To Maintain Faith and Intellect
Originally published in the Forward October 29, 1999. BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT By Louis Jacobs Littman, 272 pages, $39.50 My first encounter with the complexities and occasional hypocrisies of Orthodox Jewish politics took place in London 26 years ago. I was then a pious and rather naive rabbinical student at Jews’ College, England’s establishment Orthodox seminary….
The Latest
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On the Air, Jewish Women Talk Ambition, Sports, Circumcision
The Sisterhood, of course, isn’t the only place where “Jewish women converse.” The blog also co-produces with Lilith magazine a Women’s Roundtable podcast. And Forward editor Jane Eisner co-hosts with Rachel Sklar The Salon, a Jewish Channel television show that brings together Jewish women with a wide range of perspectives. On the latest Women’s Roundtable,…
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Circumcision: The Box Set
George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., has occasioned a fair amount of discussion of late. When it comes to our colonial patrimony or birthright, though, the Seixas family circumcision set should, by rights, give the presidential missive a run for its money. From the mid-18th century through the early years of the…
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Books Judging Gary Shteyngart and Art Spiegelman’s Taste in Books
What is on Gary Shteyngart’s mind? Only a clairvoyant would know. It’s much easier to surmise what’s on his bookshelves. The Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village has set up a display in which well-known writers take turns exhibiting their favorite books. In June, it looked as though a bookcase in Gary Shteyngart’s living room…
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Books Making it ‘True’
On Tuesday, Evan Fallenberg explored writing elaborate lies with convincing details. Today, he further explores how much of his fiction is “true.” 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 the series, please visit:…
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July 15, 2011
100 Years In The Forward An Italian and a Jew stood before the magistrate. The Italian said: “This murderous Jew tried to kill me.” Apparently this was true, and so the Jew was arrested. But it wasn’t the whole story. The two are neighbors. The Italian has children who make a great deal of noise…
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Wimpels Made Simple
Sidney Jacobson of Chester, N.J., writes: “My wife recently came into possession of a curious, bannerlike cloth about 8 inches wide and 8 feet long, and with the assistance of two rabbis, we determined that it was called a Wimpel. Yet although it was apparently a presentation made to my wife’s grandfather at his circumcision…
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Love Is Talk
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF PAUL CELAN & ILANA SHMUELI Translated by Susan Gillespie Sheep Meadow Press, 280 pages, $19.95 To honor the lovers’ letters between Paul Celan and Ilana Shmueli, this review is conducted as a written conversation between two of our reviewers who are (married) lovers. Widely considered one of the most important postwar European…
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Books News of the Carrot, Not Pain of the Stick
BREAD TO EAT AND CLOTHES TO WEAR: LETTERS FROM JEWISH MIGRANTS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY By Gur Alroey Wayne State University Press, 256 pages, $29.95 You may think you know why your ancestors made their way to this “Golden Land,” but scholar Gur Alroey’s “Bread To Eat and Clothes To Wear” demonstrates that the…
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