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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My Father’s House; My Mother Tongue
On April 7, the eve of Passover, Israeli television did something unprecedented: It aired a film in which the entire dialogue was in Yiddish. Director Dani Rosenberg’s movie, “Beit Avi” — literally, “My Father’s House”; known in English as “Homeland” — is a 40-minute drama about a young Holocaust refugee who comes to Israel in…
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Cosmetic Differences
When cosmetics queen Helena Rubinstein first opened her New York beauty salon on East 49th Street, her chief competitor, Elizabeth Arden, promptly moved her salon just four blocks away, to East 53rd Street. Years later, when the flamboyant Rubinstein, known as “Madame Rubinstein,” married a Georgian prince, Arden followed suit and tied the knot with…
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Folding, Twisting or Burning Bridges
Levi Riven doesn’t look like a compelling subject for a documentary film. But the amiable, slightly graying psychology student is at the center of Montreal filmmaker Eric Scott’s recent movie, “Leaving the Fold,” a revealing look at Hasidic Jews who have abandoned their religious upbringing for a secular lifestyle. After receiving plaudits at the Montreal…
The Latest
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The Case For Cuckolds
THE ACT OF LOVE By Howard Jacobson Simon & Schuster, 333 pages, $25 ‘Coming From Behind” (1983), Howard Jacobson’s first novel, begins with a campus mailman opening the door to a professor’s study and leaving a letter between the professor’s buttocks as he is performing the title act on a female student. His second novel…
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Between Wordsworth and ‘Shoah’
Claude Lanzmann, born 83 years ago in a northern Paris suburb, to parents of Ukrainian-Belarusian Jewish origin, is internationally famed as the director of the 1985 film “Shoah.” This epic film’s running time, depending on its country of release, is anywhere from 503 minutes in the United States to a whopping 613 minutes (with all…
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Not Written in Stone
The Ten Commandments have served as a guide for human behavior and outlook for thousands of years, yet rarely, says artist Rudi Wolff, have they inspired visual artists. In the exhibit Ten Commandments/Ten Images: A Visual Journey, presented in New York City through April 29 at Saint Peter’s Church’s Narthex Gallery, at 54th Street and…
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Forget Harvey. Got Milk?
Got milk? For most of us, it’s a simple enough business to pick up a carton of 1%, 2%, fat-free, pasteurized, organic or free-range milk from the grocer’s shelves. The kind we choose to drink is largely a matter of taste, a function of our cholesterol or an expression of support for local dairy farmers….
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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….
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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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