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 Mortara Case
If, as Christians believe, there is a hell, then surely Pope Pius IX earned a place in it for the kidnapping of the 6-year-old Jewish child of the Mortara family in 1858. New York’s enterprising Dicapo Opera Theatre commissioned, and has just given the world premiere of, a new opera based on this sensational true…
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Out of the House of Bondage
When I first came to London in 2001 and, in my brazen, comfortable-in-my- skin North-American way, wished a fellow performer a “happy Passover” during a workshop, she was shocked and cringed, and later told me to “shh in public.” This year, however, the London Jewish community is gearing up for the Other Seder, a 300-person…
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The Israeli Madonna
In politics, Iranian nuclear power is causing Israel concern, but for more than 20 years, an Iranian-born Israeli pop powerhouse has been causing Israelis nothing but pleasure. Israel’s most successful and renowned female vocalist is known by all as Rita. Being known by her first name is only one of the reasons the sensual diva…
The Latest
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Books Why Is This Night Different? Who’s Asking?
Open-Eyed Heart-Wide Haggadah By Debra Jill Mazer, edited by Shira Leba Batalion, designed by Margo Jennifer Akroyd Double Gemini Press, 62 pages, $32.95 In Every Generation: The JDC Haggadah Commentary by Ari L. Goldman, Foreword by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Devora Publishing, 96 pages., $24.95 The Kabbalah Haggadah: Pesach Decoded By Yehuda Berg The Kabbalah Centre…
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Fussing on the Cliff
All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems By Charles Bernstein Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pages, $26 A few years ago, following a John Zorn concert, I was standing outside, chatting with an acquaintance about the phenomenon of the Jewish avant-garde. Suddenly, a man of a certain age, with a strong Brooklyn accent, barged in:…
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Signposts to the Middle of Nowhere
Neal Gale writes from St. Paul, Minn.: “My parents, both American-born Yiddish/English speakers, would use two words that referred to places that were hard to find or get to: ‘Yah-Chupetz-Ville’ and ‘Allah-Drerden.’ What do these words really mean?” Mr. Gale’s parents had a sense of humor. “Yah-Chupetz-Ville” is none other than Sholom Aleichem’s Yehupetz, the…
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March 26, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward News has reached the Forward that a group of butcher shop bosses in the Bronx has conspired to do away with the union, and so the workers will be forced to go back to the old conditions of 18 to 20 hours per day. They will thus have to…
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The Nigun Project: Reb Nachman’s Nigun
Listen to Jeremiah Lockwood and Sahr Nguajah’s reinterpretation of Reb Nachman’s nigun Nigunim, or songs without words, were a crucial outward expression of the religious experience of the 18th-century Hasidic revivalist movement. The early Hasidim created a new and distinctly Jewish ritual act by singing these meditative and incantatory melodies in chorus with a community…
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Hot Lands of Clay
Considering how often the word “fragile” is used to describe Israel — its politics, peace, peoplehood — it makes perfect sense that a new exhibit at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum uses ceramic art to explore modern life there. “From the Melting Pot Into the Fire: Contemporary Ceramics in Israel,” organized with the Ceramic Artists Association of…
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Going Down to Funky Town
Listen To Abraham Inc.’s “Tweet Tweet”: Here are a few lyrics from “Tweet Tweet,” the title track from Abraham Inc.’s recently released debut album: “We bring the nigguns from the street/Get off your seat/Stamp your feet/Come and touch me in the tweet tweet/Ya da di bum bum, ya da di bum bum, ya da di…
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It’s Complicated
Can you have déjà vu for something you don’t remember? Watching the news about Iran these days, I feel as if it’s 1967 all over again. Once again, a leader of a large Middle Eastern country, a man with ambitions to be the leader of the region, threatens Israel with annihilation. Once again, evidence appears…
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