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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The Night New York’s Chinese Went Out for Jews
On a spring evening in 1903, in New York City’s Chinatown, a line snaked down Doyers Street from the Chinese Theatre as Manhattan played host to an improbable coming together of two immigrant communities: Chinese and Jews. They were queuing up for a Chinese-organized benefit performance for victims of the Kishinev pogrom that, the previous…
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Hope in November
GOD’S OPTIMISM By Yehoshua November Main Street Rag, 80 pages, $14 By Eve Grubin Gerard Manley Hopkins stopped writing poetry because he worried that its rhythms were too sensual for a Jesuit priest. Fortunately, Hopkins’s religious superior encouraged him to write, and we now have the musical, muscular Hopkins poems that explode with awe for…
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The Woman Who Remade the Jewish Museum
After 30 years as director of New York’s Jewish Museum, Joan Rosenbaum announced in December that she would be stepping down from the post at the end of June. Few would deny that during Rosenbaum’s tenure, the Jewish Museum has become a powerhouse of art and creativity, both in the Jewish world and in the…
The Latest
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Film & TV Finding New Life As a Cult Classic
Take a barefoot American hippie clad in a rabbit-skin jacket and a bowler hat, trying to run away from the traumatic memories of the Vietnam War by traveling to Israel, of all places; a sexy redheaded vixen who can’t seem to keep her shirt on for longer than a few minutes, and a naive flower…
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February 4, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward New York and environs have been rocked by what initially was thought to be a massive earthquake but turned out to be an explosion on a ship docked off New Jersey that was laden with dynamite. At least two dozen people were killed, and more than 200 wounded, in…
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Books Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq Stoke Their Egos and Bore Their Readers
“Public Enemies,” far from being the “duel” suggested by the book’s subtitle, is in fact an act of mutual masturbation by two of France’s leading luminaries, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck). In the book-length series of letters, the friends encourage each other to indulge in self-reflection. They talk about their fathers. They spar…
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Facts and Figures
Since the early 20th century, the American Jewish community has placed its faith in numbers — in data and statistics. Where words and images could be manipulated, numbers, it seemed, were unassailable and steadfast. They told the truth. They held society accountable. Little wonder, then, that so many American Jews were dismayed by the recent…
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Was Sarah Palin Actually Blood Libeled?
Did Sarah Palin have justification for calling the accusations that she was responsible, by dint of her rhetoric, for the attempted murder of Gabrielle Giffords and for the deaths of six other people a “blood libel”? Not, of course, if you think Palin can’t say anything right. Nor, it would seem, if you are defending…
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Books What Jews Can Learn From Christian Writer Reynolds Price
Durham, N.C. is not an easy place to be a non-conformist. It is the home of Duke University, notorious for its male lacrosse team’s behaving badly and its “Cameron Crazies,” obsessed basketball fans. Even in January 2011, when the Durham public schools need to make up a snow day, school is scheduled for Saturday, Jewish…
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The Escape Artist.
During his life, American modernist painter Philip Guston’s artistic styles ranged from 1930s social realism to 1950s–60s Abstract Expressionism to his deceptively simple-looking last style, which has often been reductively described as cartoonlike. Despite being written off by such high-profile critics as Robert Hughes and Hilton Kramer, Guston’s work has endured. And even though the…
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Books Mark Twain, “Mishpocha,” and Me
In her previous posts, Erika Dreifus blogged on her upcoming panel at AWP, “Beyond Bagels and Lox,” and the inspiration for “Quiet Americans.” 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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