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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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In a Familiar Hand
From Dennis Gottfried comes this query: “Since European Jews used the Hebrew alphabet to write Judeo-German or Yiddish, and Spanish Jews used it to write Judeo-Spanish or Ladino, I wonder whether other Jewish populations in the history of the Diaspora — ones speaking Persian or Arabic, for example — did the same thing.” They did….
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Gold, Silver and Rubber: Village Voice’s ‘Best of NYC’ Awards
“S’iz shver tzu zain a yid,” runs an old proverb: it’s hard to be a Jew; yes, but is it hip? Definitely has been, at times (see this blog for two notable testimonies), but, if you hold Village Voice’s “Best of NYC Awards” to be the barometer of coolness, in 2009 we’re coming in only…
The Latest
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Matisyahu Squared
Jewish rapper, beach, self-interview. Got it? It’s clear why he’s a famous singer, not a famous comedian — but it’s cute. Hat tip Erez and Shemspeed.
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Steinhardt Attacks Jewish Leaders
In a surprise move, even noted by the non-Jewish business press, Michael Steinhardt attacked Jewish communal organizations and their complacent leadership. A longtime stalwart of Jewish philanthropy, he accused organizations of disliking change and being satisfied, at least in the case of campus Hillels, with “trying hard” but not being “good enough.” Too many Jewish…
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Canonizing Saint Simon?
Neil Simon is, it turns out, in line to be one of the greats. The Broadway revival of his Jewish family play, “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” was supposed to be offered in repertory with the second of its two sequels, “Broadway Bound.” David Cromer — whose recent productions of “Our Town” and the avant-garde musical, “The…
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Jennifer Kronovet’s "Awayward" is Way Inward
Reading Jennifer Kronovet’s recent collection “Awayward,” you may think she’s translating from another language, transposing foreign syntactical structures, turns of phrase, rhythms, tonalities — a whole unfamiliar psyche — into English. Kronovet’s speculative original is forever inaccessible, and can only be known through her translation. “Known”, though, would be to overestimate its accessibility because, while…
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Ignaz Friedman: Great Jewish Pianist
The Polish Jewish pianist Ignaz Friedman may not be a household name, but his majestic artistry, honored by a brilliantly researched new biography by Allan Evans, “Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist,” just published by Indiana University Press, makes him of urgent interest to anyone who loves piano music. A Naxos CD reissue series, establishes Friedman…
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Finian’s Rainbow
The welcome Broadway revival of Burton Lane (born Burton Levy in 1912) and E. Y. Harburg’s 1947 musical “Finian’s Rainbow,” opening October 29 at the St. James Theatre offers a fresh opportunity to relish its wish-fulfillment overturning of racism and economic inequalities in the mythical American state of Missitucky, when the “Idle Poor Become the…
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I Sing the Body Eclectic
The LABALMA Body Project, a multimedia art exhibit running at New York’s 14th Street Y until November 17, explores ideas of physicality in a genuine, contemplative and engaging way. While its works occasionally verge on the overly literal, the project as a whole is, thankfully, a far cry from simple navel-gazing. A collaboration between LABA…
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Eating Animals Are Wrong
Eating Animals By Jonathan Safran Foer Little, Brown and Company, 352 pages, $25.99. As a novelist, Jonathan Safran Foer writes with a certain whimsy about violence. In “Everything Is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” fictional treatments of the Holocaust and the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks contain humor and lyricism to…
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Dance by Dance
Deborah Colker is as animated in life as she is on the stage. A director and choreographer with a more than 30-year career, Colker grew up in Brazil to Russian immigrant parents who gave her the Jewish education that she says allowed her to pursue dance and create art. Colker was the first woman to…
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