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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Rabbis and Halacha Grapple With Advances in DNA Technology
Advances in genetic analysis and its medical applications are bringing unprecedented, if uneven, change to the world of Jewish law. Most often, the matter of genetics is considered in the context of issues on either end of life’s spectrum: those that relate to fertility and to the identification of post-mortem human remains. “DNA analysis is…
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Court Ruling Could Affect Genetic Patenting
A federal court ruling striking down patents on two cancer-causing genes has the potential to shake up the world of genetic patenting. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union, together with 18 individual plaintiffs, brought a suit against Myriad Genetics, which holds the licenses to the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which can…
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A Tough Year for Gaucher Sufferers
It has been a year filled with anxiety, fear and disappointment for sufferers from Gaucher disease, who are continuing to deal with the fallout from last year’s shutdown of a pharmaceutical plant. In June 2009, Genzyme, the manufacturer of Cerezyme, then the only approved treatment for type 1 Gaucher disease, was forced to shut down…
The Latest
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Tay-Sachs, MSUD Added to Social Security List
The Social Security Administration has added two genetic diseases that affect Ashkenazi Jews to its Compassionate Allowances list, expediting the awarding of disability aid to sufferers and their families. Tay-Sachs and Maple Syrup Urine disease were added to the list effective March 1, 2010. They were among 38 diseases and cancers added to the original…
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Where To Go for Support and Help
Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 520 New York, NY 10017 (212) 682-9900 www.dystonia-parkinsons.org Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation funds scientific research seeking to understand the causes of, and to find potential cures to, the movement disorders dystonia and Parkinson’s disease. Bloom’s Syndrome Foundation 7095 Hollywood Boulevard #583 Los Angeles, CA 90028…
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Books A Historical Goose Chase for the Real Jewish Jesus
It seems obvious to note that Jesus — like Don Juan, Oedipus and Count Dracula — has a cultural life having little to do with his original narrative. Although it is now widely believed that he did exist, Jesus is so buried in centuries of Christian tradition that in 1906 Albert Schweitzer declared the search…
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Getting the Heck Out of Hock
Estie Neff wants to know, “What are the origins and meanings of the word ‘hock?’” “Hock” can mean many things, including a kind of white wine and the tarsal joint of the hind leg of a digitigrade quadruped. I would assume, however, that Ms. Neff is interested in two particular meanings: the English slang word…
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Dada Does Tinseltown
Orto-Da, an experimental theater group based in Tel Aviv, arrived at the Los Angeles International Airport irritable and exhausted. Delayed because of a visa battle that left their lighting technician stranded in Israel, the troupe members collected their baggage and raced to the Carlson Family Theatre in Calabasas, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, to begin…
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A Writer During Apartheid, and After
Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008 By Nadine Gordimer W.W. Norton and Company, 752 pages, $39.95 ‘Could Philip Roth erase the tattoo of the Nazi camps from under the skin of his characters?” Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer rhetorically asks, illustrating her assertion that “none of us can… ‘choose our subjects’ free of the contexts that…
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Through a Gunsight, Darkly
Israeli director Samuel Maoz has accomplished something truly remarkable with his first feature film, “Lebanon,” which opened in the United States on August 6. Without resorting to Computer-Generated Imagery or 3-D, Maoz has created a profound, visceral world of war that puts special effects to shame. “Lebanon,” which last year became the first Israeli film…
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Why We Need Akkadian
An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological- Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents With Supplements on Biblical Aramaic By Hayim ben Yosef Tawil KTAV Publishing House, 456 pages, $125 Reading the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, is tough. For one thing, it’s very, very old, and not refracting the text through our 21st-century prism is difficult. For…
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