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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The Revivalist
At the end of John Cohen’s 1963 film, “The High Lonesome Sound,” Roscoe Holcomb, a coal miner, construction worker and banjo player, sits hunched over a songbook on the threadbare sofa in his ramshackle house, singing the Baptist hymns he learned as a boy. Holcomb has long since abandoned the austere Old Regular Baptist Church…
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December 10, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward It’s been a bad time for pants maker Abraham Roth of Rivington Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, as he is currently on trial for the murder of his wife, Bertha. The first witness in the trial, a police officer, described the scene he saw upon entering the Roth…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘The Jewish Way’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Michael Miloff writes about “The Jewish Way: Living…
The Latest
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Shema is for Real’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Ira J. Wise writes about “Shema is For…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Engendering Judaism’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Idit Klein writes about “Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive…
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Dan Miron’s Authoritative Answer
From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking By Dan Miron Stanford University Press, 560 pages, $65 Dan Miron’s “From Continuity to Contiguity” is a work of Jewish literary theory — an exceedingly erudite one, and in some ways the most important to appear in recent decades — that reads a little like…
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Yearning for the Past in the Future
Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging Edited by Derek Rubin Brandeis University Press, 336 pages, $26 We continue to be in the tricky business of trying to define what we mean (or don’t mean) by “Jewish writer.” Any writer who is a Jew? Only a writer, Jewish or not, who includes…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Nine Talmudic Readings’
In celebration of Jewish Book Month, The Arty Semite is partnering with the Jewish Education Service of North America (JESNA) and the Jewish Book Council to present “30 Days, 30 Texts,” a series of reflections by community leaders on the books that influenced their Jewish journeys. Today, Ari Weiss writes about “Nine Talmudic Readings” by…
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‘Shoah’ Did Not Age
In 1985, Claude Lanzmann released “Shoah,” a 550-minute epic film that changed the way people understood the Holocaust and the relation between history and cinema. Traveling through many countries Lanzmann recorded, in many languages, tens of people who were witness to different aspects of the systematic extermination of European Jewry. Now 85 years old, and…
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Books Not a Historical Record
Earlier this week, Ruth Franklin wrote about sharing a stage with Yann Martel and discussed whether anything new can be said about the Holocaust. She is the author of “A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book…
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What Is This Thing We Call Jewish Literature?
Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging Brandeis University Press, 336 pages, $26 We continue to be in the tricky business of trying to define what we mean (or don’t mean) by “Jewish writer.” Any writer who is a Jew? Only a writer, Jewish or not, who includes Jewish “content” in his…
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