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
Moacyr Scliar, 73, Storyteller of Jewish Latin America
The death of Brazilian fabulist Moacyr Scliar, at the age of 73, on February 27, in his native Porto Alegre, represents the loss of Latin America’s most popular Jewish writer of his generation, and the most influential. Scliar engaged a large audience, at home and abroad, reflecting on crucial issues that define modernity: the place…
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March 18, 2011
100 Years Ago in the forward The Philadelphia Jewish community is up in arms since Rabbi Landman of Temple Knesset Israel gave a sermon in which he said that all Russian Jews are swindlers, fakers, liars, crooks, conspirators, thieves, robbers and murderers. It would be one thing if a Christian or a convert had cast…
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Mamash Not the Queen’s English
I’ve received a number of responses from readers to my March 4 column on “Yeshivish,” two of which I’ll share with you today. One is scholarly, the other is comic, but what rule states that the two can’t appear side by side? On the scholarly side, the American Jewish linguist Sarah Bunin Benor has sent…
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The Rebbe of Sinn Féin
Last December, 300 Israeli rabbis, many of them employees of the state, signed a declaration forbidding Jews to sell or rent property to non-Jews. For some of them, the move was inspired by the philosophy of Isaac Halevi Herzog (1888–1959), one of the main modern proponents of a “halachic state” run according to the tenets…
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The Secret History Of Jewish Metal
Mention of heavy metal music may bring to mind satanic rituals, church burnings and members of the 1980s glam-metal band Ratt sporting shoulder-length hair. If Yom Kippur gets a look in, it’s only because you’ve decided to repent for head-banging so hard to Slayer that your yarmulke fell off. Destined to change that, a number…
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The Kid from Kazakhstan
If you’re anything like me, chances are high that the only film you’ve ever seen about Kazakhstan starred Sacha Baron Cohen and was not exactly flattering to the former Soviet republic. So when I received a press packet calling “The Gift to Stalin” “one of Kazakhstan’s most recent award-winning international hits,” I involuntarily thought, “very…
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Books For the Love of Books
Just several feet away from where people are immersed in the digital worlds of their laptops, iPhones, and Kindles, Ido Agassi’s hand-designed, individually printed and bound books calmly look on from a display case in the lobby of the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, California. Those who take time to observe Agassi’s “Books as…
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Man of the People of the Book
Christianity in the English-speaking world changed forever 400 years ago. With the release of the authorized version of the King James Bible in English, Scripture became radically more approachable. As Christians recently began celebrating the anniversary of this text, in Jerusalem a quirky, secular-born Orthodox rabbi completed a translation project of similar magnitude for Jews…
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A Matter of Life and Death
Considering the firestorm around last year’s “Dead Sea Scrolls” exhibit — the Palestinian Authority demanded its cancellation, claiming Israel had “stolen” the artifacts — it’s understandable that Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum might tread lightly around Middle East politics. But the ROM’s new megashow, “Water: The Exhibition,” opens at a time when thorny policy challenges around…
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Books Reimagining the Talmud
Earlier this week, Aaron Roller, an editor of Mima’amakim, wrote about the Jewish Austin Powers and the Jewish poetry conspiracy. 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: I knew…
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Film & TV Hollywood’s Women Problem
While we have been busy looking at women in magazines, Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University has been tracking the rather sluggish growth of women in Hollywood. The Center just released its annual report, “The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of…
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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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Fast Forward Holocaust survivor event features a Rob Reiner video address — recorded just weeks before his death
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