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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Reaping the Peace Dividend
Amid the press of our hectic, activity-filled daily lives, important milestones often go unnoticed. September 2, 2010, was one of those occasions. Its existence barely registered in my household or, I suspect, in yours. But it should have, for 100 years ago, on or about September 2, the conditions of modern life changed markedly —…
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What Modern Orthodoxy Thinks of Its Neighbors
The Relationship of Orthodox Jews With Believing Jews of Other Religious Ideologies and Non-Believing Jews Edited by Adam Mintz KTAV, 401 pages, $30 Like a picture, a title is occasionally worth a thousand words. Such is the case in the most recent publication of the Orthodox Forum, an intellectual think-tank of centrist Orthodox rabbis and…
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Mixing in Diabolical Circles
Jack Rosenthal of Mamaroneck, N.Y., writes to me about the Satanic image of the Jew in medieval Christian culture and, specifically, about the words “Mephistopheles” and “Satan.” “Satan,” of course, comes from the Bible, most familiarly from the Book of Job, and Mr. Rosenthal proposes a Hebrew etymology for “Mephistopheles,” as well. This he does…
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Theology in the Poconos
Nemesis By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 304 pages, $26 ‘The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. Then she stepped out to the edge of the diving board and looked foggily into the pool; it could have been drained, myopic Brenda would never have known it.” These very first…
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An Overpacked and Empty Case
The Sonderberg Case By Elie Wiesel, translated from French by Catherine Temerson Random House, 192 pages, $25 Elie Wiesel is a writer with the power to bring us close to existential absolutes: life and death, suffering and transcendence, guilt and innocence, faith and the loss thereof. Throughout his long and fruitful career he has worked…
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October 15, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward Four Jewish families — 12 people in all — were asleep in their Harlem tenement on 120th Street and Madison Avenue, when a thief snuck in through a window and chloroformed them all. The thief then proceeded to steal all the cash from the apartments. The Levinskys’ apartment was…
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Marrying I.B. Singer and Grandma Moses
Originally published in the Forward April 22, 1994. It is early evening in Crown Heights, and children fresh from yeshiva trickle into a narrow storefront. They dump their books, fling off their coats and sprawl on the gray industrial carpeting. There they spend the next hour raptly contemplating a kitchen kettle. This is not some…
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A Twilight Unto the Nations
In the world of comics, Israel has a long and lively culture of illustrated political commentary. There’s even an Israeli Museum of Caricature and Comics in Holon to honor that tradition. Contemporary work from graphic novelists such as Rutu Modan, Yirmi Pinkus and Asaf Hanuka is attracting international raves, and the scene is filled with…
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Eban Gets Plastered — With George Segal
Originally published in the Forward June 16, 1995. Abba Eban has endured countless situations fraught with danger, discomfort and uncertainty, but none quite like the one he faced when George Segal wrapped his body in plaster-impregnated bandages. This was the first step in the making of the cast that was to become “Portrait of Abba…
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Drama and Global Politics, From Irish and Jews
You probably know that there are Jews in Ireland — Leopold Bloom, in James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” is Jewish, after all. But that’s Dublin. There isn’t a lot written about Northern Irish Jews, apart from a fairly well-known story about Jews ending up there, thinking they were already in America and staying on to work. Belfast’s…
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Books Of a Jewish Banking Dynasty, Only the Sculptures Survived
Edmund de Waal, a British artist and the son of a clergyman of the Church of England, knew he was missing a vital part of himself, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A middle-aged married father of three, he had spent his adult life ensconced in his London studio, where he made thousands of…
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