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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Study Finds Jews Donate More to Poor
Jews make more donations than people of other religions to “basic needs” causes, which are those that focus on food, shelter and other fundamental necessities, according to a recent study comparing philanthropic patterns among Americans of different faiths. The study, by Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis economics professor Mark Ottoni Wilhelm, analyzed data that is…
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Living on Life’s Barest Edge
For the past 15 years, Sasha Chanoff has worked in refugee rescue, relief and resettlement operations in Africa and the United States. In 2004, he founded Mapendo International, a humanitarian organization that rescues and protects refugees in Africa who live in peril in war-torn communities. Despite the urgent needs of these people, in the past…
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From Sex.com to Clean and Green
Clean-tech entrepreneur and Jewish philanthropist Gary Kremen walked through his home in Los Altos Hills, Calif., on a recent afternoon. He held his 5-month-old son, Isaac, in one arm and gestured with the other arm to the environmentally friendly baby paraphernalia. Today, Kremen’s home is filled with diapers, bottles and teething rings. Not long ago,…
The Latest
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When Kindness Counts, a Dinner To Say Thanks
The buffet dinner hummed with a festive air: plates of fragrant chicken; amiable chatter; little gifts of scented soap and candles, opened with unrestrained glee. But then things turned quiet, and serious, when Rivka Rita Ittleman stepped forward to thank her guests — “my angels.” Circling the room, she named the 20 women, one by…
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Three Major Grant Makers Offer To Finance Digital Media Projects
The Jewish community is full of big ideas to foster Jewish culture and community online. Now, finding money to bring those innovations to life is about to get a little easier. Three major players on the Jewish philanthropic scene — the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Righteous Persons Foundation and The Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family…
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Jewish Geography, the Maine Way
Call it two degrees of separation. Jews with connections to the state of Maine journeyed in September to a lakefront home in Westchester County, N.Y. They came from around New York to meet and reminisce about this most northeasterly state. The co-host of the gathering, Anne Schneider, said if someone did not find a lost…
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Getting Schooled in Tzedakah
For Andrea Engel, giving to charity and volunteering for charity work — two basic facets of tzedakah — came as second nature. As a high school student in Birmingham, Ala., she headed her B’nai B’rith Youth Organization fundraising effort. As a Northwestern University undergraduate in suburban Chicago, she served on the executive board for the…
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Rethinking Egalitarianism
Recently I met up with a Jewish academic from New York who had relocated to a midsize Jewish community in the South. In New York, he and his family had attended B’nai Jeshurun, the huge, well-known liberal congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. But in his new home, the options were less attractive: He described…
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What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Eldad Ganin would like an explanation. He writes: “In Hebrew we have a clear pattern. If the name of a country ends, as many such names do in Hebrew, with –ya, the names of the country’s people and language follow automatically. Thus, rusya, ‘Russia,’ rusi, ‘Russian [person],’ rusit, ‘Russian [language]’; angliya, ‘England,’ angli, ‘Englishman,’ anglit,…
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A Profane Reliquary
Saul Bellow, Letters Edited by Benjamin Taylor Viking, 608 pages, $35 Why not simply admit it? The new collection of Saul Bellow’s “Letters” (Viking 2010) is a modern reliquary. It is a treasured remnant of the beloved wonderworker. And who are the followers, the faithful? Bookish cranks, mainly, plus unstoppable line-quoters, Jewish lit fetishists, passionate…
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November 5, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward In one of the city?s parks, alongside the naked trees, I walk. Only the autumn winds and me. The old park watchman trundles along slowly, broom in hand, sweeping away the memories of summer. I step on acres of dry leaves, crackling under my steps. Are they speaking? Are…
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