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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The ‘Nightingale of the Desert’ Sings The Baal Shem Tov’s Nigun
I met Khaira Arby in January at a rooftop party in Timbuktu, Mali, when my band, The Sway Machinery, was en route to perform at the legendary Festival in the Desert. Arby, known as the “Nightingale of the Desert,” is a mainstay of the festival and has been one of the most popular singers in…
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October 1, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward At a Christian convention in Cincinnati, the head of New York’s Episcopalians, the Rev. Grosvenor, called for an end to proselytizing among Jews. In a speech given to the conference, the reverend said that “missionary work among the Jews should come to an end because hundreds of years of…
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Make Me A Match
Shortly after the North American press premiere of “The Matchmaker” hit technical difficulties and screened without English subtitles, the film’s Israeli director, Avi Nesher, tried to calm himself. “Wrist-slashing is an option,” he said. About 100 journalists and industry types showed up for the recent Toronto International Film Festival screening, and dwindled to a handful…
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Union Square’s High-Concept Sukkahs
On September 19, the finalists of the Sukkah City design competition unveiled their re-imagined sukkahs in New York’s Union Square. Locals and tourists alike rubbed shoulders to get a closer look at the ritual huts, which transformed the downtown park into an architectural showcase. The sukkahs will remain in Union Square through September 20. After…
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Designing a Kosher Sukkah
Most contemporary sukkahs, with their snap-together frames, their plastic tarp walls and their bamboo mat schach, or roofing material, bear little resemblance to the high-concept huts that went up over the weekend in New York’s Union Square. The booths erected in the downtown park — winning entries in the Sukkah City design competition — might…
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Mark Cohen on Seymour Krim
Mark Cohen, editor of “Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim,” explains why Krim has been neglected as a Beat, a writer and a Jew. The Forward’s Arts & Culture editor Dan Friedman talks with Cohen about his forthcoming work on the parody songwriter Allan Sherman, an essay about which is slated…
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Books ?Exodus? Redux
Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel?s Founding Story By M.M. Silver Wayne State University Press, 280 pages, $29.95 Leon Uris: Life of a Best Seller By Ira Nadel University of Texas Press, 376 pages, $27.95 The 1958 novel ?Exodus? by Leon Uris, and the 1960 blockbuster movie that it inspired, set to…
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Books How (and Why) We Saved Soviet Jewry
When They Come for Us, We?ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle To Save Soviet Jewry By Gal Beckerman Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 608 pages, $30 It is easy enough to understand why Gal Beckerman chose the somewhat melodramatic title, ?When They Come for Us, We?ll be Gone,? for his masterful and highly readable history of the…
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Books Background Check On a Nazi Hunter
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends By Tom Segev Doubleday, 448 pages, $32.50 When I was contributing to Simon Wiesenthal?s obituary in 2005 for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, I learned something that surprised me: The legendary Nazi-hunter didn?t personally hunt down a lot of Nazis. Sure, Wiesenthal helped capture some Nazis and their collaborators, and…
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Books To the End and Back Again
To the End of the Land By David Grossman. Alfred A. Knopf, 582 pages, $27.95 There is a moment in David Grossman?s novel, ?See Under: Love,? when an Israeli son of Holocaust survivors gazes at his own sleeping child and remarks to his beaming wife: ??It?s a good thing he can sleep through all the…
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Books An Actress for The Ages
Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt By Robert Gottlieb Yale University Press, 233 pages, $25 Robert Gottlieb?s biography of Sarah Bernhardt is the first volume in ?Jewish Lives,? a ?major new series? being offered by Yale University Press. But in what sense did this most legendary of actresses live a Jewish life? Her mother was…
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