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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The Odd Couple
Eli Valley takes a satirical look at ultra-Orthodox Judaism, outreach to young, secular Jews, and perceptions and misconceptions of authentic Jewish life. Click on the thumbnail to the right for a larger version: Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His column, “Comics Rescued From a Burning Synagogue in Bialystok and Hidden in a Salt…
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Cooking Up a Novel With Katharine Weber
Katharine Weber is the author of the award-winning novel, “Triangle” about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Her new novel, “True Confections,” plays with the characters’ and readers’ sense of truth. In the spirit of protagonist Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, the narrator of “True Confections,” the following interview may not have happened exactly as written. But these…
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Why Read The Zohar?
The Pritzker translation of the Zohar into English by Daniel Matt — the fifth volume of which has just appeared — should be greeted as a major cultural event. Yet, the publication of each volume has typically produced tiresome book reviews on the ownership of the word Kabbalah, comparing the academic approach of Gershom Scholem…
The Latest
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Orgies on the Green Line
Theodor Adorno famously wrote: “To still write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric and it corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today.” For me, his dictum has always meant that poetry about the Holocaust is inadmissible — being, a priori, inadequate — and what’s the use of…
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Sweet Morsels of Faction
True Confections By Katharine Weber Shaye Areheart Books, 288 pages, $22.00. Look online, and you’ll see a Web site for Zip’s Candies, complete with an online order form for their three varieties of confections. Katharine Weber’s new novel, “True Confections,” is about a candy company, Zip’s Candies, and the lives and loves of the Ziplinsky…
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Errors on a Global And Historical Scale
You would think that Stephen P. Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace & Development and author of “Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East,” would know better. In an op-ed column on “Eisenhower, Truman on the Mideast” in the January 8 Boston Globe, Mr. Cohen takes Israel…
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January 22, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward Numerous spies have infiltrated the ranks of the Bund in the major Jewish areas of the Russian Empire and are causing great difficulties for its operations. As a result, the Bund Central Committee has published a circular describing about a dozen of these spies, a number of whom have…
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Taking Avatar Seriously
“If you’re an author or Ph.D. candidate who had the foresight to propose a book on the philosophy of ‘Avatar’ before the film was even released in theaters, the past week (and the blogosphere) has been very, very good to you.” — Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, December 22, 2009 Well, good for me,…
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Camondo Splendor
The fate of the Camondo family illustrates just how perilous it can be to be generous to the people of France. An exemplary exhibit, The Splendour of the House of Camondo: From Constantinople to Paris, 1806–1845, which opened November 6, 2009, at Paris’s Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (Museum of Jewish Art and History)…
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Saviors at Nazi Ground Zero
Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” introduced the world to the improbable enigma and moral dilemma of a German Nazi Party member who rescued Jews. The combined commercial forces of Spielberg and the Hollywood image-making machine turned Oskar Schindler into a larger-than-life hero. The New York Jewish Film Festival, presented by the Jewish Museum and the Film…
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Where Jewish Women Converse (on Television)
The Sisterhood blog is one forum in which Jewish women of different ages, denominations and political ideologies can debate issues of communal importance. “The Salon,” produced by The Jewish Channel and hosted by Forward editor Jane Eisner with media critic Rachel Sklar, is another. In this newly available episode, the panel — made up of…
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