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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On the northwest side of Chicago, my old Jewish neighborhood may soon live on in infamy
Albany Park was home to Rosenblum's Bookstore, Weinberg's Clothing — and also alleged DC shooter Elias Rodriguez
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A Casanova of Causes
KOESTLER: THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL ODYSSEY OF A TWENTIETH-CENTURY SKEPTIC Michael Scammell Random House, 689 pages, $35 In 1925, Arthur Koestler, a 20-year-old Hungarian journalist, began to believe that politics was “above all futile” — and that there was “more truth” in philosophy. Zionism, he thought, was the field where he could get the most…
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Conflict and Compromise: Day School Parents Weigh In
Last year, I published an essay on MyJewishLearning.com called “Seize the Day School.” I worried about this essay. “Seize” spelled out, in great detail, my own ambivalences — note the plural — about sending my daughter to Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston. I feared that once the piece was published, her teachers might…
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Jewish Power Tools
I recall very clearly the afternoon in the early 1990s when the male eighth graders at the Jewish day school I attended learned about AIDS. Our physical education teacher, one of many Israelis imported to Toronto to staff the school, gathered us under the basketball nets in the gym and described the deadly disease. Then…
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A Tale of Trade-offs
‘Yes, Rabbi Wolf was gargantuan,” I tell my children. “A giant of a man, with more hair protruding from his knuckles than I had on my head, even back then when it was covered with thick curls. He was the one we were sent to for serious disciplining. But he wasn’t the mightiest rebbe in…
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Et Tu, Brute?
At least once a month, someone, usually a business acquaintance who doesn’t know much about my private life, will ask what my 14-year-old daughter is up to at her Hebrew day school, and then go on to let me know in no uncertain terms that I am a traitor to every aspect of the Yiddish…
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Jewish Farm School Gains Traction Among College Students
Rather than jet to tropical party capitals for spring break, about 105 Jewish college students are choosing to do something a little different during their time off. Some will be collecting maple sugar on the East Coast, while others will be working on organic farms in California. At the same time, they will learn about…
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In Israel, a Youth Village That Leads by Example
The staff at Yemin Orde Youth Village in northern Israel is delighted: It’s raining, and the children are getting drenched coming back from school. Many children in Israel’s residential facilities never experience a walk in the open air to or from school. They commonly live in large complexes that house both dormitories and classrooms. But…
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Jewish Education Below the Mason-Dixon Line
In the past, many Southern colleges and universities had few, if any, Jewish students roaming their campuses. But recently schools below the Mason-Dixon Line have stepped up their recruitment of Jewish students. They offered scholarships, built centers for Jewish learning and socializing, and engaged the surrounding Jewish communities in their efforts. The Forward interviewed students…
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Why Should You Care?
Why Should I Care?: Lessons From the Holocaust By Jeanette Friedman and David Gold The Wordsmithy, 219 pages, $15 When I was in high school during the early 1990s, I needed very little prodding to study the Holocaust. Historical accounts of the horror and the depravity of the Final Solution, recounted by teachers, textbooks, documentaries…
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Next Time, Let’s Teach Social Justice in an Effective Way
Once a year, the eighth graders at a synagogue I’ll call Temple Beth Torah spend an afternoon volunteering at a soup kitchen. During the bus ride to the site, the teacher passes out a Talmudic quote about feeding the hungry and spends a few minutes trying to engage the students in conversation about the passage….
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‘Scientists on Trains’ Leaves the Station in Israel
The morning oration is like a normal university class: a professor, an engaging intellectual lecture and questions at the end. But the similarities between a regular college class and the new Hebrew University “Scientists on Trains” program pretty much stop there. The program, which was launched in November, has brought a number of the Hebrew…
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