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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Yid Lit: Linda Grant
Forward contributor Jo-Ann Mort speaks to Orange Prize-winning novelist Linda Grant about her new novel, “We Had It So Good.” In it, Grant uses the story of an American Jew in Britain to illuminate how baby boomers’ hippie beginnings actually led them to more traditional professions and lives of conspicuous consumption. Read Jo-Ann Mort’s review…
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Kiev Jewry’s Temporary Triumph Over Adversity
Kiev: Jewish Metropolis. A History, 1859-1914 By Natan M. Meir Indiana University Press, 424 pages, $27.95 Natan Meir’s meticulous new history of Kiev Jewry in the modern period, is an assiduous work of conventional scholarship. Meir provides a thorough, lucid and ultimately heartrending account of the noble successes of Kiev’s Jews in building a solid…
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Four Questions About ‘Nemesis’ Answered
I’ve organized my talk around four questions: 1) How does “Nemesis” fit into the body of Philip Roth’s work? Roth has gone a long way toward answering this question. On the page preceding the title page of “Nemesis,” he lays out a neat Linnaean classification of his many novels. At the top are listed the…
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Revolution by Intent
The Israel Film Festival provides viewers with an opportunity to see the Israel of Israelis by showing the country through a different, more localized lens. These films often delve into issues and circumstances that are uniquely local and attempt to translate them for a universal audience. Last year’s festival showcased journalist Miki Rosenthal’s film “The…
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Paul Simon vs. Bob Dylan, Who’s Greater?
In a recent interview in Rolling Stone magazine Paul Simon remarked that he was miffed by comparisons between him and Bob Dylan: “He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time. I sound sincere every time. Rock and roll has a lot to do with image. If that’s not your…
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A Reluctant Prophet
Bob Dylan turned 70 on May 24. So what? Well, for one, let’s see you continue to perform two-hour concerts, 100 nights a year, as you’ve been doing practically nonstop for the past quarter century or so, all over the world, keeping things new and fresh while the music industry around you falls apart. Your…
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Woody Allen: Paris, Je t’aime
In his new movie, “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen does what he does best. He creates a character out of a city and adds his signature sleight-of-hand. Think “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” when a handsome leading man steps through a screen to romance a depression-era Mia Farrow, or “Zelig,” when the title character appears…
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June 3, 2011
100 Years In The Forward Arriving alone in New York from Russia, Sarah Deutsch began to look for her husband, whom she married six years ago in the shtetl. She found him, but to her surprise, he was married to another woman. Deutsch contacted the police, who arrested her husband, Barnett Deutsch, for bigamy. Both…
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Books The Never Ending Book
On Monday, C. Alexander London wrote about being an accidental adventurer. 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: By the far the question I am asked most often by…
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Fermisht but Not Fergotten
Here’s a question from Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School: “Many Yiddish words begin with the prefix fer-, such as ferklemt, ferblondzshet, ferkakt, ferdreyt, fermisht, etc. What’s the common denominator? Is there a linguistic connection to the series of English words that includes ‘forgo,’ ‘forbid,’ ‘forget’ and ‘forswear’? Something tells me that these two sets…
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Books Q&A: Canadian Jewish Book Award Winner Alison Pick
For Canadian author and poet Alison Pick, it was her personal journey of discovering and reclaiming her Jewish identity that led to her greatest professional success. The 35-year-old recently won the 2010 Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction, being presented May 30 in Toronto, for her historical novel, “Far to Go,” about a Czechoslovakian Jewish…
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