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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Commission Calls For Immediate ‘Chaiflation’
[ ![][2]][2] A joint commission of Israeli and Jewish communal leaders is urging that the numerical translation of the word “chai,” long associated with good luck, be changed from 18 to 25 as a form of economic stimulus. “We believe that by embarking on this policy of quantitative expansion, the Jewish community can jump-start the…
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Glenn Beck Embraces His Yiddishkeit With Open Arms
[ ![][2]][2] Following the recent revelations that Glenn Beck (born Beckershteyn) shares the Jewish genetic marker, the Cohen Modal haplotype, he has been brushing up on his Yiddish and planning his holidays. Later this year he will be making the pilgrimage to Uman, and in his backpack will be an early draft of Eric Yoffie’s…
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A Partial Retraction
[ ![][2]][2] This paper prides itself on its editorial independence and its willingness to speak the truth, however unpopular. But after due consideration, we at the Backward have concluded that some elements of last week’s editorial, “You Asked For It,” do not stand up to scrutiny: • Not withstanding the stale cookies at the oneg…
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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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