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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American Eccentrics
Homer and Langley Collyer became reluctant celebrities in the late 1930s when their decaying Harlem mansion began to attract the attention of neighbors and the press. Scions of an old New York family, the Collyer brothers had lived alone in the four-story brownstone since their mother’s death in the late ‘20s, leaving their home less…
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When American Judaism Was Yiddish
Yiddish Drashos and Writings By Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, edited by David E. Fishman Ktav Publishing House, 355 pages, $29.50. There was a time when American Jews of very different ideological perspectives would talk, and listen, to each other. One Sunday in 1949, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the leading Orthodox Talmudic scholar in America, addressed…
The Latest
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The Pros and Cons of Air Power
Bert Horwitz writes from Asheville, N.C. “Could you explain the origin of the Yiddish word luftmentsh? How is it possible that by joining two common German words, *Luft *(air) and *Mensch *(man, human being), one gets a Yiddish but not a German word?” It is, of course, perfectly possible for two Germanic words to be…
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September 4, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward A letter we received from our correspondent in Galicia, Poland, details some unusual activity involving local Jews. First, he reports on an honest-to-goodness duel between two Jewish boys over a beautiful girl. Duels, which have long been popular methods of solving disputes, have never been particularly popular with Jews,…
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Moshav in the Himalayas
It takes just 50 rupees and a 10-minute auto-rickshaw ride to reach Tel Aviv from Lhasa. At least, that is, ‘mini-Tel Aviv,’ otherwise known as Dharamkot and Bhagsu, an Israeli backpacking mecca in the Dhauladhar mountains of Northern India. In Dharamsala, the de-facto capital of Tibetans in exile, maroon-robed chanting monks perform their daily routines…
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Latin Chutzpah
Tito Puente never had a bar mitzvah, but if he did, the celebration might have looked a little like the scene outside Lincoln Center on August 23, during the grand finale of the center’s summer Out of Doors festival. Despite the rain, the final concert of the series attracted a mixed group, as Arturo O’Farrill…
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Glorious Bastard
Quentin Tarantino is a director, writer and cinematic iconoclast known for works such as “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction” that revel in non-linear plots and the portrayal of violence. His most recent film, “Inglourious Basterds,” takes the viewer on a bloody stroll through a fiction in which a band of Jewish-American soldiers is given free…
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Even a New Siddur Can’t Close ‘God Gap’
What can a new Hebrew-English Siddur do to solve the problems of prayer for modern Jews? It is no secret that the communal prayer experience of modern, socially integrated Jews in Western countries is deeply degraded. Rabbis and cantors work valiantly to engage congregants in worship with a sense of spiritual consciousness (kavanah) to little…
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Film & TV Chris Rock and the Politics of Frizz
Comedian Chris Rock has made a documentary that delves into the roots of the painful politics surrounding black women’s hair. Inspired by Rock’s young daughter, who asked him why she didn’t have “good” hair, the film looks like it’s going to be a fascinating and hilarious take on the way race and gender issues are…
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Clarice Lispector: Mystical Novelist of Brazil’s New Bio
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector By Benjamin Moser Oxford University Press, 496 pages, $29.95. Clarice Lispector was, in her own words, “guilty from birth, she who was born with the mortal sin.” She also was one of the past century’s greatest writers. Lispector’s childhood was spent in Recife, a large, poor city…
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Everything in Order
Not all the passions stirred up by Jewish prayer books are directed toward God. The new “Koren Siddur” (Koren Publishers Jerusalem) is a good example. Endorsed by the Orthodox Union and bearing the translations and commentary of Sir Jonathan Sacks, British Chief Rabbi, it has energized Modern Orthodox Jews seeking to assert their worldview, not…
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