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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Blessing a Building — Building a Blessing
The construction of a new synagogue is always an occasion for celebration, so it was with particular pomp that the Rhineland city of Mainz recently dedicated its new synagogue and Jewish community center. The dedication ceremonies, held September 3, featured an array of German politicians, including German President Christian Wulff. Many of them blessed the…
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One Image To Make Man and Woman?
Probably no section of the Bible has more exercised the interpretative powers of its readers than the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, with which we again begin the annual cycle of Torah readings on Simchat Torah — and, arguably, no two verses in these chapters have aroused more discussion over the ages than…
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October 8, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward Strikes have become common events over the past few years, and all of us are used to the constant picket lines of knee pants makers, shirt waist makers, cloak makers and other garment industry workers. But in Philadelphia, an unusual strike took place in the Hevre Dorshei Tov Synagogue…
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Jews and the Booze
With the passage of the twin alcohol-friendly celebrations of Simchat Torah and the lesser known, but more suggestive, Festival of the Water Bearing, my thoughts turn to the seemingly contradictory relationship between Jews and booze. We’re a tribe that drinks, but we’re not drunks — so the story goes. That old gallon bottle of Manischewitz…
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A Room of Their Own
Are women-only spaces sexist, or are they progressive? In the cultural and political world, even in schools and religious institutions, the debate has grown over the past few years. Do venues such as art shows, magazines and blogs provide a much needed opportunity for women to communally examine their roles and identities in larger society?…
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This Side of the River Jordan
It’s obviously a losing battle, but I can’t help carrying on with the fight. Every time I see an item in the newspaper, like Jackson Diehl’s September 13 column on the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in The Washington Post, or Roger Cohen’s column on the same subject in the September 14 New York Times, I…
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A Boardwalk Empire of Their Own
Before Snooki ruled the Jersey Shore, Atlantic City’s reigning boss was Enoch “Nucky” Johnson. HBO’s new television series “Boardwalk Empire,” set in Atlantic City during Prohibition, draws on the true story of Nucky and his Irish, Italian and Jewish partners in crime. Ethnic and racial rivalries melted away in the bathtub stills so long as…
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It’s a Mad Mad MAD World
Al Jaffee’s Mad Life By Mary-Lou Weisman, illustrated by Al Jaffee It Books, 240 pages, $27.99 The biography “Al Jaffee’s Mad Life” couldn’t have a more apt title. Jaffee’s engaging tales of his mad, mad, mad childhood are even stranger than his long tenure as a cartoonist at Mad magazine. A journey through the Jewish…
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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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