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
Misreading Claude Lévi-Strauss the Man
After the well-deserved hosannas of praise for the centenary, and subsequent dignified mourning for the demise, of the great French Jewish anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, a backlash seemed inevitable. On October 7, “Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory,” by Patrick Wilcken, presented as the “definitive account of the life, work, and legacy,” was published by…
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October 29, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward When Joseph Prager broke into the Beyz Yankev Synagogue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn at dawn, he didn’t anticipate any resistance. After breaking a cellar window, Prager stole whatever he could, putting everything in a large sack. But Rabbi Rabinovitz and his shamus, Samuel Press, caught him in…
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Gaza, The Wright Way
Lawrence Wright, the renowned author and longtime staff member of The New Yorker, seems surprisingly fragile standing alone onstage in New York City’s 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center. Considering he is about to take a long, hard look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially as it pertains to Gaza, one can forgive…
The Latest
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Separate Universes Coexisting: Chaya Czernowin’s Musical Artistry
Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin, long admired in select contemporary music circles, is now winning wider acclaim both demographically and geographically for her ardent, finely honed works. Czernowin’s chamber music in particular has won kudos, as a flurry of upcoming international performances by diverse hands proves. Over the next six months, Czernowin’s work will be performed…
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Oath of Loyalty to What?
If Israel had Words of the Month, October’s would be “Jewish,” as in “a Jewish and democratic state,” or medina yehudit ve’demokratit, in Hebrew. This is what — if a controversial cabinet decision is adopted as law by the Knesset — anyone becoming an Israeli citizen will have to swear loyalty to. The many criticisms…
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Nicole Krauss’s Desk and Its Clutter
Great House By Nicole Krauss W.W. Norton & Company, 289 pages, $24.95 It is a great desk — an enormous, ornate escritoire equipped with 19 drawers — rather than a “Great House” that connects the characters in Nicole Krauss’s ambitious third novel, following “Man Walks Into a Room” (2002) and “The History of Love” (2008)….
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Steering Between God And Reason In America
Is America a “Christian” nation? Or is it a secular nation, subject to Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state? For many Americans, these are the central questions about the role of religion in public life. But the assumptions behind both questions reveal a certain ignorance. The story of America is not some fantasy…
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One Nation, Under Various Divinities
Listen to certain sections of the body politic today, and you get the impression that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were part-time — if not full-time — evangelicals. Not so, say s Marilyn Mellowes, who spent the better part of the past several years grappling with what she calls “the intersection of religion…
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How America Came To Think ‘K’ Is OK
Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority By Sue Fishkoff Schocken, 384 pages, $27.95 Anyone who has ever spent time label gazing while at the supermarket has surely noticed the alphabet city of hekhshers — OU, OK, Kof-K, Star-K, KSA, cRc — staring back from a jar of…
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Books Polishing the Golden Rule
The story goes that a certain heathen approached the Jewish sage Shammai and asked to be converted, on the condition that he is taught the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Indignant at receiving such a ludicrous request, Shammai chased the man away. Undeterred, the heathen then approached the sage Hillel with the same…
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Books Wizardly Weaver Who Invented ‘Role Models’
The American sociologist Robert K. Merton, who died in 2003 at age 92, was a longtime fixture at Columbia University, where he invented such now-standard terms as “role model” and “self-fulfilling prophecy,” as well as the concept of a “focus group.” A thoughtful new study, out on September 14 from Columbia University Press, “Robert K….
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