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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Boxing Dumb
March 2011 has been tough for the chosen folk: a YouTube video showed House of Christian Dior fashion designer John Galliano ranting against Jews and “ugly apeople”; WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blamed a Jewish press conspiracy for his problems, and Charlie Sheen declared that his mom is Jewish and therefore he is, too. It turns…
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Sniffing Out a Devil or Two
Dr. Cyril Sherer writes: “Perhaps you can help me with some words I heard during my childhood. (I am now 89.) I grew up in the East End of London, speaking Yiddish with my immigrant grandparents. My vocabulary at that time was limited, since our only subject was food. My father, who was British-born, spoke…
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Macedonia Opens a Balkan Holocaust Museum
On March 10, Skopje, the capital of Macedonia — home to more than a quarter of the country’s population of 2 million — gained a new cultural artifact: the Holocaust Memorial Center of the Jews from Macedonia. A landmark in the middle of the city, the center remembers Jews lost in the Holocaust from Macedonia…
The Latest
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The Posthumous Triumphs of Morton Feldman
With the sole exception of one problematic performance of his “Coptic Light” in 1986, Lincoln Center never presented any of Morton Feldman’s music during his lifetime. Indeed, even since his death, in 1987, the center has presented little of his work. A notable exception was its 1996 retrospective of Feldman’s compositions — a well-attended, highly…
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Joshua Foer’s Memory Palace
MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF REMEMBERING EVERYTHING By Joshua Foer The Penguin Press, 320 pages, $26.95 In his intriguing first book, “Moonwalking With Einstein,” Joshua Foer takes on the task of explaining the history of memory, its current state and how he entered the world of competitive recollection. He surveys the meaning…
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Books Miss Venezuela Material
On Monday, Reyna Simnegar, the author of “Persian Food from the Non-persian Bride: And Other Sephardic Kosher Recipes You Will Love,” wrote about Sephardim Strike Back! 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 Living Letters From the Past
Before the telephone and the Internet, those separated from each other by great distances depended on letters to communicate. Although gifted writers have brought the form to the level of high art, for many people, the letter served more essential purposes. With it, they shared ideas, expressed feelings, collaborated on plans, and communicated information both…
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The Tale of a Chance Meeting That Set the Music World on Its Ear
Originally Published in The Forward on February 2, 2001 It takes only a few people to make an era. On February 9 to February 11, Carnegie Hall will present a series of three concerts and several related events celebrating two such people who met by chance. When John Cage met Morton Feldman at a 1950…
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Books Found in Translation
Crossposted from Haaretz Moshe Sakal lived for six years in France, where he learned to speak fluent French with a Parisian accent, but when he talked to his Egyptian-born, French-speaking grandmother back home in Israel – she would give him a haughty look. “She spoke like Dalida,” he said, referring to the popular multilingual Egyptian…
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Arendt on Trial
The Eichmann Trial By Deborah Lipstadt Nextbook/Schocken, 272 pages, $24.95 In 1961, the young state of Israel tried and executed the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the New Yorker, an account that was published in 1963 as “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” Arendt did not set out to write a journalistic…
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Books Sephardim Strike Back!
Reyna Simnegar is the author of the recently published “Persian Food from the Non-persian Bride: And Other Sephardic Kosher Recipes You Will Love.” 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…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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Yiddish World Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
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