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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Honeyed, And Lighter Than Air
One of my fondest childhood memories of Passover is of my mother’s khremslakh, which were as easy to eat as they are difficult for the gutturally challenged to pronounce. (It’s done with the first and last consonants like the “ch” in Bach.) These matzo pancakes were different from the khremslakh — the singular is khremsl…
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April 17, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward Not long ago, a young Jewish man appeared before the magistrate in City Court in Manhattan. Having just finished law school, he acted as his own attorney. He was in court in order to have his name changed. “Why do you want to change your name?” the judge asked….
The Latest
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Old World, New World Variations on Brisket
There are few holiday foods that call up tradition and memories as much as brisket or brust, as I’m told my great-grandmother called it. There are endless variations of recipes — each one boasting local influences from sweet paprika to Coca-Cola to spicy Mexican chiles. This Passover season, we share with you a recipe from…
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Yid Vid: A Condensed Guide to Family-Friendly Passover Videos
Lots of cute Passover videos have been popping up the last couple of years. A reflection of the semi-new hipster Jewishness, I suppose. Search the topic on YouTube and an amazing 3,820 results pop up. Unfortunately, when I searched, the top link is to a video messianic Passover Seder. But look just a little further…
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Cantorial Blues: The Age of Myth Returns
Jeremiah Lockwood is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter and visionary. He has appeared with J-Dub artists Balkan Beat Box and released a blues-oriented solo album “American Primitive” (Vee-Ron Records), in 2006. Lockwood’s most recent project, The Sway Machinery sees its first album, “Hidden Melodies Revealed” (J-Dub Records) debut April 7. The Sway Machinery’s impressive fusion of…
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The Primal Sublime
The very name of The Sway Machinery, a Brooklyn-based cantorial-infused supergroup, brings to mind the conjunction of the natural and the created, the human and the machine, and the group’s music rejoices in that paradox. The musicians, coming from relatively mainstream bands, here align themselves with the primeval drive to dance and with its sublime…
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Exquisite Knowledge of Destruction
‘Incident at Vichy” is generally considered one of Arthur Miller’s lesser plays. It was first produced in 1964, in the temporary home, near Washington Square, of New York City’s newly created Lincoln Center Theater. Despite a stellar cast including David Wayne, Hal Holbrook and Joseph Wiseman, and direction from Harold Clurman, this much anticipated drama…
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Freedom From The Slavery of Passover Seders
Passover is coming again, and with it, the irony of liberation. What irony? That while Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, so many of us feel enslaved to it. The cleaning, the prohibitions, the absurd details of kosher dish soap and unkosher salt, and worst of all, the endless drone of the Haggadah, which…
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Poet and Activist Rich, Still Dreaming Of a World Without Borders
A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1996-2008 By Adrienne Rich W.W. Norton & Co., 208 pages, $24.95. Seventy-nine-year-old Adrienne Rich has always refused to succumb to the multiple traumas that life has thrust upon her. One senses that this courageous poet and political activist has been blessed with an overabundance of resilience and…
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Why Is This Civil War Different From All Other Civil Wars?
All Other Nights By Dara Horn W.W. Norton & Co., 384 pages, $24.95. More than most other novelists of her generation, Dara Horn draws inspiration from neglected nooks of Jewish history. She set part of her first novel, “In the Image,” published in 2002, in Amsterdam before the German invasion. Horn, however, has been reluctant…
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With Frog in Throat
Since one of the guests we will be having for our Seder this year is a native French speaker who knows no Hebrew, he will get to use a Haggadah in our possession that is a facsimile of an original published nearly 200 years ago. Its title page is printed in both Hebrew and French,…
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