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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Internet: The Hatred Super-Highway
‘What’s the difference between Jews and Nazis? The Jews are guilty of the crimes they’re accused of.” The boldfaced quotes are real. They were written within the past few months by people who believe they are true. They are quotes from hateful blogs and Web sites — some written in America, some abroad. Antisemitism pulses,…
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How, Why, Who Hates Us
Varieties of Antisemitism: History, Ideology, Discourse Edited by Murray Baumgarten, Peter Kenez and Bruce Thompson University of Delaware Press, 248 pages, $75.00. Historian Victor Tcherikover used to say that there are few phenomena in history that have a history of 2,000 years. Antisemitism is one of those phenomena. The cultural antisemitism of the ancient world;…
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Standing Up and Leading the Way
Sybil Terres Gilmar writes from Philadelphia: “Recently, as part of my work as a docent at Mikveh Israel, the oldest continuous congregation in Philadelphia (since 1740), I came across the word ‘duchening’ in conjunction with an early 19th-century chair adorned with hands indicating the priestly blessing. In trying to research the origin of the word,…
The Latest
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November 27, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward Avrom Shulman, a resident of Bayonne, N.J., was arrested for running an illegal gambling casino in the basement of the Beys Yosef synagogue on West 20th Street in Bayonne. Shulman, who was being held on $500 bail, was arrested in the casino, along with more than 30 gamblers, all…
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Best of All Worlds: Tova sings Schaechter-Gottesman at Workman’s Circle
What happens when a pan-cultural jazz cabaret diva sings the songs of the first Yiddish poet to win a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship? Well Theresa Tova has been getting in some practice with the songs of the Forward’s good friend Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, so whatever happens should be of a high caliber. Find…
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Hakoah Vienna: 100 Years Old and Still Powering On
In Vienna, on the night of Saturday, November 7, the Sports Club Hakoah, also known as Hakoah Vienna, held a gala ball to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The evening’s entertainment included a bare-chested acrobat whose midair gyrations, on a swath of purple cloth hung from the ceiling, suggested both the precarious nature of Jews in…
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What’s in a Name? Russian Jewish Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg
A November 22nd recital by the noted Latvian-born cellist Yosif Feigelson at New York’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is a welcome opportunity to experience the sinuously graceful and dramatic cello music of the Russian composer of Polish-Jewish origin, Mieczyslaw Weinberg. I once asked Weinberg’s colleague, the Russian Jewish conductor Rudolf Barshai, if the composer’s Judaism…
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The Amazing Jew: Salsa Legend Larry Harlow
Jews are drawn to Latin music, much as they are to Chinese food, by a combination of sensual pleasure and the liberation which comes from exoticism. Such is the conclusion to be drawn from the stellar career of salsa music performer and composer Larry Harlow (born Lawrence Ira Kahn in Brooklyn in 1939), who earned…
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A Self-Help Book for the Aspiring Philanthropist
The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan By Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon Jossey-Bass, 288 pages, $29.95. ‘The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan,” the new book penned by billionaire philanthropist Charles Bronfman, and the man who runs his foundation, Jeffrey Solomon, is something of a self-help…
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November 20, 2009
100 Years Ago In the Forward In front of her colleagues and a group of electronics experts, Dr. Louisa Rabinovitz performed an experiment that entailed electrocuting a rabbit and then bringing it back to life by sending another electrical charge through its body using a machine that the young doctor invented. The Edison Electric Company,…
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Philanthropic Young Jews Seek Same
Tara Lyn Gordon, the 26-year-old founder of Artists 4 Israel, says she averages three dates a week from the fundraisers she’s been attending for three years. “Last week [I had] five: two in the same day,” she said. Gordon goes to the fundraisers as a way both to network and to meet potential matches, and…
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Opinion The new face of Holocaust denial is harder to spot — and more dangerous