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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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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Before Madoff, or the Goyim, a Shande
‘Bad for the Jews? Madoff, Dwek, and Getting Over Worrying So Much About Avoiding a *Shandeh *for the Goyim” was the title of a column by former Forward arts and culture editor Alana Newhouse in the July 31 issue of New York Magazine. Jews, Newhouse wrote, should come to terms with the fact that their…
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Bernstein, Davening in the Vernacular
As difficult as it is for outsiders to understand, especially in retrospect, Leonard Bernstein’s overachieving father, Sam, was so opposed to his son’s fixation with music that neither he nor his wife, Jenny, even showed up for their son’s student debut as soloist in Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the orchestra of Boston Latin School. For…
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August 28, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward It’s busy season in baseball, and the American people are obsessed. It’s no exaggeration to say that young and old, rich and poor, ignorant and highly educated all wait impatiently to see the sports pages in their morning papers, where they can find the scores of yesterday’s games. We…
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The Other Jewish Genetic Diseases
Randall Belinfante was a bit baffled. When he and his wife went to take blood tests in preparation for starting a family in 2003, he discovered that the screening included a panel of tests for Ashkenazic Jewish genetic disorders. But Belinfante is Sephardic. “We told them at the time that we were not Ashkenazi, but…
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For Four Decades, a Doctor’s Legacy of Life
Forty years ago, when Dr. Felicia Axelrod began caring for patients with familial dysautonomia at the New York University Medical Center, 50% of parents who had children with the rare genetic disorder could expect to bury them before they reached the age of 5. Today, thanks in large part to her pioneering work on treating…
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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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In Jewish Genetic History, the Known Unknowns
The Jews have been a continuous feature of human history for at least 3,000 years. As much as perhaps any other group, the Jews have shaped and influenced the Western world, from antiquity to the present. But who exactly are we speaking of when we talk about “the Jews”? That a group that came to…
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Gaucher Patients Cope With Drug Shortage, as New Treatments Beckon
For thousands of people with Gaucher disease, the most common genetic disorder affecting Jews, the next few months will be challenging. Many are going without the drug used to treat their potentially life-threatening enzyme disorder, after a virus contaminated a Boston-area manufacturing plant of biotechnology company Genzyme. Meanwhile, Gaucher patients and their doctors are watching…
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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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