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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A Relentless Rebellion Against Unfairness
For those who believe in a documentary film that is pitiless, sometimes harrowing, but always relentlessly veracious, December 17 is the last chance to catch the yearlong Museum of Modern Art tribute to Frederick Wiseman, who turned 80 last January. Related festivities have included this past June’s AFI/Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival, in Silver Spring,…
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Rhyming Slang For Four By Twos
Forward reader Susan Hessel writes: “I am reading a book called ‘The Report,’ a novel based on an incident in a London bomb shelter in 1943. In the book, Jews, particularly Jewish refugees, are referred to as ‘four-by-twos.’ Although this is apparently Cockney rhyming slang, I have never heard the expression before and wonder what…
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December 3, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward It has been said that New York City’s Jewish bums are worse than its gentile bums. In a way, this is true. Twenty-five years ago, when the neighborhood still had saloons on the corners, a Jew couldn’t pass by without getting smacked or insulted by a drunken Irishman. And…
The Latest
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘I and Thou’
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, Jonathan Woocher writes about “I and Thou” by…
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Earthbound Angels
As part of a season devoted to Tony Kushner’s work, Signature Theater Company has daringly chosen to remount the epic masterpiece “Angels in America” for the first time since its Broadway run in 1993, providing an opportunity to look at the play anew, this time with an eye toward how it holds up outside of…
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Books Everything We Need to Know
On Monday, Ruth Franklin wrote about sharing a stage with Yann Martel. 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 Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘On Being a Jewish Feminist’
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, Nigel Savage writes about “On Being a Jewish…
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Books Video: What Freedom Meant in Europe
When we talk about the Enlightenment, or the Haskalah, in Europe, we have a general historical sense that all Jews were in ghettos and then the walls came down. One day pogroms, the next Einstein, Freud and Kafka. The period of time was indeed extraordinary, as Michael Goldfarb elucidates in his book “Emancipation: How Liberating…
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Understanding the Myth and Music of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan in America By Sean Wilentz Doubleday, 400 pages, $28.95 Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 By Greil Marcus PublicAffairs, 512 Pages, $29.95 Choose almost any critical approach — biographical, political, religious, literary, musical, philosophical or historical — and chances are it already has been used to try to explain Bob Dylan and…
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Books Holes
Ruth Franklin 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 Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: Ah, fall — the season of hot…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Great Jews Since Bible Times’
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, Jonathan D. Sarna writes about “Great Jews Since…
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