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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Israeli Scientist Adapts Antibiotic That May Fight Genetic Disease
A team of researchers in Israel has made a breakthrough in modifying an until-now highly toxic antibiotic so that it might one day be used to repair defective genes that cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Usher syndrome, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and even some cancers. Timor Baasov, a professor of chemistry at the Technion-Israel Institute…
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New Niemann-Pick Mouse Engineered
It is with good reason that Edward Schuchman calls Niemann-Pick Disease type A a “very, very challenging disease.” The neurodegenerative disorder is rare, kills those who have it by age 2 or 3, and has no known cure. But in May, Schuchman and his research team at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York announced…
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In Druze Genes, a Look Back at the Distant Past
Who knew that Israel’s Druze had been holding a key to understanding an important dimension of human history? A new examination of the DNA of this small and insular Levantine group — which follows a secret religion and hardly ever intermarries — has brought us one step closer to better understanding how the world’s various…
The Latest
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After Late-Onset Tay-Sachs Trial Is Pulled, Parents Pull Together
Perhaps it’s the urgency of Tay-Sachs that brought parents to action when a pharmaceutical company allowed a promising clinical trial to languish. Two years ago, drug company ExSar proposed a trial that would test the chemical pyrimethamine’s ability to restore a vital enzyme in Late Onset Tay-Sachs and Juvenile Tay-Sachs patients. ExSar had three medical…
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Plaintiffs in Breast Cancer Gene Suit Hope To Overturn Patent Policy
‘If you walk out into the street and tell someone that a company owns their genes, they’ll look at you strangely,” said Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action. “But that is exactly what has happened.” Brenner’s group is one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit recently filed in federal court challenging patents controlled…
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Living With LOTS, S.F. Woman Won’t Let Disease Win
Conventional wisdom dictates that runners, like most athletes, improve with experience. A promising freshman cross-country runner might become the school track star by senior year. But that didn’t happen for Vera Pesotchinsky. As a high school student in California, Vera saw the opposite trend: She peaked as a freshman, then spiraled confusingly downward. “I began…
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New Program Targets Persian Jewish Disorders
The United States recently got its first genetic screening program targeting a non-Ashkenazic Jewish community. On July 12, the Medical Genetics Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles launched its Persian Jewish Genetic Screening Program. The program kicked off with an afternoon of education and free screening at Sinai Temple, a local Conservative synagogue…
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Daughter Inspires Dad’s Quest for Cure
Dakota Jean Bihn started dropping things at age 3. That’s how Ohio accountant Ken Bihn begins telling the story of his daughter, a tale that has led him down the unexpected path of starting his own foundation. Dakota spent years bouncing between puzzled doctors. “She was clumsy, then she stuttered a little bit,” Bihn said….
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Shrink And Grow
With many shrinks away between now and the end of the summer, Susan Shapiro, the author of the new novel “Speed Shrinking” (St. Martin’s Press), suggests abandoned patients get their fill of talk therapy from these works of fiction: “Fear of Flying” By Erica Jong There’s a reason 20 million copies are in print. Jong’s…
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Your Father Is Dead and My Pot Roast Is Ruined
There is a moment directly after a loved one’s death when thought and action cease. It’s an instant of dissociation from everything before the tragedy, and everything that will follow. The hit HBO television show “Six Feet Under” took advantage of that moment once a week for five seasons to educate viewers about death and…
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August 21, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward W An open letter from Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, also known as Mendele Moykher Sforem (Mendele the Bookseller), appeared recently in a Yiddish newspaper in Russia in which the great Yiddish writer charged New York’s Hebrew Publishing Company with reprinting his works without permission and without any compensation whatsoever. He…
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