Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Eternally Wandering Jew Comes Home
[ ![][2]][2] The eternally wandering Jew, long thought to be a legendary figure from Christian tales, recently arrived home safely, clutching a cup of Mochaccino.TM Melvin Cohen, a storied figure of antisemitic literature and art refused to say where he’d been until he’d had a nap. Upstairs, in his own room, thank you very much….
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God Resumes Prophecy — Via Twitter
[ ![][2]][2] These days, it seems, nobody can afford not to Tweet — not even the Creator of the universe. God, the all-powerful divinity worshipped by the world’s monotheistic religions, has resumed direct communication with humans, and He’s doing it 140 characters at a time. Or, as the Holy One, Blessed Be He, put it…
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Israel Reins in Firebrand Minister
[ ![][2]][2] To limit diplomatic fallout from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s inflammatory public comments, Israeli officials have begun staging a series of fake public appearances to fool Lieberman into believing that the outside world is listening to him. These events are totally closed affairs and are stocked with a mixture of Foreign Ministry staff and…
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Israeli Rabbinate Declares Non-Orthodox Jews ‘Kosher — and Delicious’
Jerusalem — In a historic ruling, the Israeli rabbinate has finally decided to recognize Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative Jews — as the perfect entree for Shabbat dinner. Israeli Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Moshe Metzger issued the ruling yesterday. The Sephardic chief rabbi agreed with the declaration of Jewish edibility, adding only: “preferably stewed with dried fruits,…
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What’s a Nice Gerund Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
[ ![][2]][2] When people ask me who put the “sin in cinema,” I respond, “Kenneth Marcus of Englewood Heights, N.J.” Into their dropped jaws I explain that during the early days of American movies — when Englewood and environs were Hollywood and Broadway rolled into one — Mr. Marcus wanted to lend a sheen of…
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If You Agree With Me, Then You Are Right
[ ![][2]][2] It has recently come to my attention that you’ve got some disagreements with me about the issues. In a series of letters to the editor, you’ve suggested that my logic is flawed, that I’m ill-informed about issues, that I misrepresent facts and that my knowledge of history is thin at best. These are…
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I. B. Singer’s Secret Hispanic Meydl
[ ![][2]][2] A newly-discovered hand-written letter written in Yiddish by Isaac Bashevis Singer to Magdalena Salazar, his Mexican maid of seven years in the Upper West Side apartment he shared with his wife Alma, offers insight into a previously unknown romantic liaison by the Nobel Prize winner. Stuck to a Zabar’s grocery list which had…
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February 26, 2009
[ ![][2]][2] Hope For Israel Dear Backward, I always love to turn to your Arts & Culture pages. In a world where everything is so uncertain and life can sometimes seem so cheap, it makes me proud to be a Jew. Benjy Netanyahu Jerusalem, Israel Winter Olympic? Dear Backward, After my Bar Mitzvah in October…
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Drawing on Hitler’s Book
On the way to the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco where Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf opened on February 11 for a five-month run, a cranky neighborhood in my mind muttered, “History is bunk.” Then I remembered that the phrase was coined by Henry Ford, the carmaker and antisemite, and I was tossed…
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Un-Righteous Indignation
For a columnist, there’s no such thing as a bad reaction. Agreement feels good, of course, but disagreement is better than apathy, and bitter disagreement means, at the very least, that one’s managed to say something. Thus, over the past few months, I’ve relished the opportunity to engage with smart critiques of my opinions on…
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Do Islamic Leaders Mean What They Say?
Jihad and Genocide By Richard L. Rubenstein Rowman & Littlefield, 260 pages, $59.95. Richard L. Rubenstein, my doctoral advisor, first rose to prominence with his path-breaking 1966 book, “After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism.” Improperly regarded as the Jewish contribution to the then fashionable “death of God debate,” it argued that no theology could…
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Culture That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
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Opinion Were the attacks in Boulder and D.C. the product of ‘blood libel’? Not so fast
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