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
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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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘The House of Rothschild’
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, Dave Weinberg writes about “The House of Rothschild”…
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Books Civil Rights and Cheap Burials: Remembering Lawyer Robert Treuhaft
Human rights lawyers who spend their lives defending unpopular clients like Vietnam War draft resisters and free speech advocates can expect mostly indirect posthumous tributes. Such is the lesson of a friendly new volume, “Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford” by Leslie Brody, an English professor at the University of Redlands, out in…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: ‘Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy’
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, Will Schneider writes about “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s…
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Books 30 Days, 30 Texts: The Torah
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, Cheryl Weiner writes about the Torah. Every week,…
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A Wild Beast Of a Novel
Dolly City By Orly Castel-Bloom, Translated by Dalya Bilu Dalkey Archive Press, 176 pages, $13.95. Dan Miron, one of Israel’s best-regarded literary critics, once said that he sees in Orly Castel-Bloom’s work “a shout of resistance, a scorn for social norms and public taste.” In Castel-Bloom’s novel “Dolly City” — first published in Israel in…
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Time to Get Out of Your Apartment
How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less Without Leaving Your Apartment by Gregory Levey Free Press, 288 pages, $25.00 How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden Vertigo, 208 pages, $24.99 Although Gregory Levey briefly worked as a speechwriter for Ariel Sharon (a job he…
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Je t’aime, Ahbal
When, early in November, Ofer Eini, head of the Histadrut, Israel’s national trade union, publicly called defense minister Ehud Barak an ahbal for illegally employing a Filipino housekeeper without proper work papers, he was using a word you won’t find in standard Hebrew dictionaries. You’ll find it in Arabic ones, though — and in Israeli…
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Teaching Poetry No Longer
The Poetry Lesson By Andrei Codrescu Princeton University Press, 128 pages, $19.95. Creative writing programs over the past half-century have endorsed the maxim “Write what you know,” so why don’t we have more novels about creative writing programs? Departmental meetings, thesis advisories, workshop tensions, suicidal poets, deferred student loans — the material is ripe for…
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Brother and Sister
This is the story of a brother and sister, Russian immigrants, who arrived at Ellis Island almost 90 years ago, knowing no English. Decades later, I, the brother, was invited back to Ellis Island as a composer of an anthem celebrating the immigrant experience, while my sister excelled in English and became a famous novelist….
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How Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Music Survived Dictators
There are few more intense pleasures for music lovers than to see a long-underrated composer finally receiving a deserved place in the sun. Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Russian composer of Polish-Jewish origin who died in 1996, has long flown under the radar as one of the most accomplished of modern composers. Usually lost in the shadow…
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In Case You Missed It
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Theater They helped elect Los Angeles’ first Black mayor; but to him, they were just Bob and Shirley
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Books In ‘Something We Said,’ Richard Pryor’s daughter finds words to discuss the unspeakable
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News In the race for Jerry Nadler’s seat, much talk on Israel but little disagreement
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Film & TV A Hasidic wedding entertainer tries to keep up with the times — if his ego will let him