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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Toward a Jewish Architecture?
Louis I. Kahn’s Jewish Architecture: Mikveh Israel and the Midcentury American Synagogue By Susan G. Solomon Brandeis University Press, 236 pages, $45. Long regarded as one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, Louis Kahn has become the focus of renewed popular attention. The Oscar-nominated documentary film “My Architect” (directed by his son,…
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When in Rome (Don’t Call Yourself Roman)
From down under in Melbourne, Australia, Lauren Wiener writes: “Could you please explain how ‘Nusach Sfard’ came to be the Nusach of some Ashkenazi Jews and why the family name Ashkenazi exists mostly among Sephardic Jews?” Let’s take part two of the question first. Although on first thought it may seem illogical that Sephardic Jews…
The Latest
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November 6, 2009
100 Years Ago In the Forward New York City police detectives are working overtime on the Lower East Side to catch a gang of horse poisoners that has been plaguing the Jewish quarter for some time. During the past year, for example, more than 250 horses were poisoned on the Lower East Side alone, and…
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A Modern Esther Returns
After a year spent dark while renovating what is now the David H. Koch Theater, the New York City Opera has chosen to revive one of the most powerful American Jewish operas for its first full production of the season. On November 7, Hugo Weisgall’s “Esther,” which premiered in 1993 to nearly universal acclaim, will…
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Gabriel and Fanny — A Jewish-Israeli Tale of Love and Hate
Grandfather left Grandmother. In those days it was considered a scandal, a secret whispered behind closed doors, unsuited, God forbid, for children’s ears. Like death, divorce was never mentioned. In those days people didn’t get divorced and didn’t die. Grandfather left Grandmother, but he also left my father, a six-month old baby at the time,…
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The Holocaust Novel From Israel That America Can’t Handle
And the Rat Laughed By Nava Semel, Translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger Hybrid Publishers, 232 pages, $25.00 ‘And the Rat Laughed” is an exquisitely wrought meditation on the present and future of Holocaust memory in Israel after the survivors are gone. Integrating story, legend, poetry, dream, science fiction and diary, Semel’s novel begins…
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High School Reunion
In the summer of 1973, when they last saw each other, Jane and Susie were a couple of frizzy-haired Jewish girls on the letter “E” page of the Mount Vernon High School yearbook. Now, older than their mothers were then, and with seven children and stepchildren between them, Jane Eisner is the editor of the…
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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…
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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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