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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Books
Notes From the Tour Bus
How can young people’s first experiences of Israel be at once profound and revelatory, yet predictable and banal? This conundrum was well in place before 2000, when Taglit-Birthright Israel began offering free 10-day trips to Israel to qualifying diasporists aged 18 to 26. But the Birthright machine mass-produces the phenomenon — and now showcases it…
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Books Birth of a Family Business
Michael Wex is the author of “Born to Kvetch,” and the new novel “The Frumkiss Family Business.” 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: A couple of years ago,…
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January 7, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward As shop worker Anna Dienstag came home to her tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, her former fiancé, Jacob Moshkovitz, was waiting for her. Upon seeing him, Dienstag ran into her apartment. Moshkovitz followed her and begged her to take him back. When she refused, he pulled out a…
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Classical Picks of the Year
And the Best Schnoz of the Year goes to… The six most memorable music events of 2010 included three New York premieres of operas long overdue for exposure, all with a specifically Jewish connection. ‘The Nose’ Picked by every critic, “The Nose” won this “year’s best” face-off hands-down. The Metropolitan Opera’s first production of Shostakovich’s…
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The End of the Reign in Spain
SEPHARDI FAMILY LIFE IN THE EARLY MODERN DIASPORA Edited by Julia R. Lieberman Brandeis University Press, 264 pages, $85 The voices that come alive in “Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora” beat down the tiresome impulse to prove history relevant. Instead, the six excellent and painstakingly researched scholarly papers, edited by Julia R….
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A Comprehensive Guide To Consumption
These days, information about this and that may be just a click away, but if Gil Marks’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Food is any indication, some of us continue to place a premium on discovering things the old-fashioned way: by leafing through the pages of a book awash in, well, encyclopedic detail. Years ago, encyclopedias were…
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Active In Documentaries
In the past year, provocative, stylized documentaries like “Catfish” and “I’m Still Here” enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame. For 2011, documentaries tackling social justice issues — such as “Waiting for Superman,” “The Tillman Story” and “Inside Job” — have won over the audiences and critics at theaters and film festivals and are garnering nominations…
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Stripping Down for Winter
When the days start getting longer but keep getting colder, you know the winter solstice is behind you. In a December 19 New York Times op-ed, Richard Cohen, author of “Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star That Gives Us Life,” briefly surveyed this yearly turning point’s place in various cultures, taking a…
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Books Forward Fives: 2010 in Poetry
In this, the second annual Forward Fives selection, we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in film, music, theater, exhibitions and books. Here we present five of the most important Jewish poetry books of 2010. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. All…
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Forgotten Witness to the Gulag
If a writer’s message is unwelcome, it may not be heeded for many years. January 21 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of the Polish Jewish author Yuli Borisovich Margolin at age 70. Margolin — whose first name is also transliterated as Julius or Yuly, and was also known as Yehudah in Israel —…
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Books Forward Fives: 2010 in Non-Fiction
In this, the second annual Forward Fives selection, we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in film, music, theater, exhibitions and books. Here we present five of the most important Jewish non-fiction books of 2010. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. As…
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