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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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October 30, 2009
100 Years Ago In the Forward Still in critical condition not long after being attacked by hired goons while he was on the picket line in front of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Joe Zigfeld lies in a hospital bed. His attackers, however, are roaming freely. The violence surrounding the pickets has abated over the past…
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Who’s Afraid of Jerusalem?
Who’s afraid of Jerusalem? Who loathes and despises her? Who execrates her, heart and tongue? Who says, What am I doing in this city of black hats And maniacs This city of blood and enmity Where Hillel the Elder pursues peace Amid the broken cups and carnage? Who hates Jerusalem For the love wherewith he…
The Latest
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A Plot Against America: A Jewish Writer’s Forgotten ‘Future History’ Of a Nazi Takeover
Arch Oboler’s “This Precious Freedom” (1942) is the first film ever made about a Nazi takeover of the United States. It was suppressed by its producer, an automaking company better known today for financial than moral bankruptcy: General Motors Corp. Broadly, Oboler was to radio what Rod Serling (“The Twilight Zone”) became to television. But…
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Dying Real
In the Oscar-winning movie “Departures,” Yojiro Takita shows traditional Japanese customs for preparing bodies for casketing prior to cremation. The art is beautiful, precise and utterly respectful of the deceased. From the very first scene, however, the movie-going audience’s expectations of the “traditional” are ruffled. First, the film shows a contemporary Japanese society in which…
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The Cons of Pro and Caring More
I suppose it is late in the day to plunge into the argument over J Street, the “pro-Israel” Political Action Committee — as it likes to call itself — whose repeated criticism of Israeli government policies and actions has many supporters of Israel up in arms. Still, with the organization’s first annual conference in Washington…
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Books An Actor Exits
The Humbling By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 160 pages, $22. Imminence of the end concentrates the craft. German critics employ the term Altersstill — late style — to designate the tendency of such aging masters as Poussin, Beethoven and Beckett to focus their energies on essentials. Once the enfant terrible of American Jewish literature,…
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Books On Becoming a ‘Beaner’: A Mexican American Story
‘Mexicans are the scum of the earth,” a student of mine said after being asked to describe the status of the immigrants at her South Carolina high school. She wasn’t menacing. We’ve known each other for years; she knows I’m both Mexican and an immigrant. My student was simply expressing the general view of the…
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Books Found in Portugal: World Famous Jewish-American Novelist
Though he still maintains his accent and caffeinated New York pulse, Richard Zimler is far better known in Portugal, Turkey, Brazil, France and England than in the United States. He may be the world’s most famous unknown living American Jewish writer. In Portugal, he has been the subject of a television documentary, and the same…
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Books Toothy in Gotham
Chronic City By Jonathan Lethem Doubleday, 480 pages, $27.95. ‘Chronic City” initially seemed an important and pleasurable novel to review, just as it must have initially seemed, to Jonathan Lethem, an important and pleasurable novel to write. The ideal reviewer, as if a character in science fiction, relives the writer’s experience word by word, sentence…
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Books Immortal Bloodsucking Opportunists
Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim By Anne Rice Knopf, 268 pages, $25.95. Anne Rice declared in 2005 in the Author’s Note to her novel “Christ the Lord” that her return to Catholicism meant she would no longer “write anything that wasn’t for Christ.” She professed no more vampires, since they reflected a “world…
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Books Six Takes on God
God According to God: A Physicist Proves We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along By Gerald L. Schroeder HarperOne, 256 pages, $25.99. The Evolution of God By Robert Wright Little, Brown and Company, 567 pages, $25.99. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate By Terry Eagleton Yale University Press, 200 pages, $25.00. Saving…
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