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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A Test of Faith
During a recent interview with the Forward, the Jerusalem-born director and activist Avigail Sperber described her new film, “Halakeh,” as a “small story… through which one can understand the place of a woman in Jewish religious culture.” Starring the Israeli actors Ohad Knoller and Hani Furstenberg, “Halakeh” documents the emotional journey of a young observant…
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They Know One
The audience clapped and cheered as the curtain parted to reveal 15 dancers in black suits standing in a semicircle in front of wooden folding chairs. The dancers were performing Ohad Naharin’s “Ehad Mi Yodea” — based on the song “Who Knows One” in the Passover Haggadah — as the closing number of a recent…
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The Evil of Two Loessers?
“Alright already, I’m just a nogoodnik. Alright already, it’s true, so nu? So sue me, sue me, What can you do me? I love you.” –From the Frank Loesser musical “Guys and Dolls” These immortal lines, sung by gambler Nathan Detroit to his long-suffering girlfriend Adelaide, remind us — just in time for a major…
The Latest
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Yid Vid: Pinsky, a Piano, and a Cheesy Plea
Some of you may know Robert Pinsky as one of the most successful Poet Laureates of the United States; some of you may know him as a ceaseless champion of poets and poetry (not least as the poetry editor at Slate); some of you may know him as a considerable poet in his own right….
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Shoot ’Em Ups Come of Age
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in two words: virtual victory. Virtual victory at all costs — despite all terror: The Churchillian imperative is in full force throughout “Call of Duty: World at War,” but playing, in addition to being just plain fun, is also an incredibly visceral experience, especially for Jewish…
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Fiery Pulpits On the Home Front
Jewish Preaching in Times of War, 1800-2001 By Marc Saperstein Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 640 pages, $69.95. In his semiautobiographical masterwork, “Mercy of a Rude Stream,” the late novelist Henry Roth recalled his Uncle Louie’s little kitchen-table “sermon” that, mainly to his mortified mother, justified his decision to join the American army in the…
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The Forgotten Revolutionary
It’s probable that few Americans have heard of Kurt Eisner. But they currently have the opportunity to acquaint themselves with a figure whose tragic fate anticipated much of the 20th century’s political violence. Ninety years ago, on February 21, 1919, Eisner was assassinated in Munich. He had just suffered a stinging defeat in state elections…
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Part II: Writing in My Father’s Footsteps
When my father was 9, his mother, Bessie, developed cancer. At the age of 12, my father returned home from school to find all the mirrors in his home covered; Bessie had passed away, and my father was told by his father, Bennie, a fruit salesman, that Bessie had died because my father had been…
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March 6, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near the corner of Essex and Grand streets, policemen dragged and shoved Ida Levinskovitz, a Jewish peddler, after arresting her for selling tomatoes on Hester Street without a license. After one officer arrested Levinskovitz, another came to help him push her down the street…
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MacMillan and Strife: A New ‘St. John Passion’
In 1965, the Second Vatican Council decreed that the death of Jesus “cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today.” You wouldn’t think the decree had done any such thing after listening to a new “St. John Passion,” by Scottish-Catholic composer James MacMillan. The composition premiered…
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Hollywood Hath No Fury Like a Jewish State Scorned
Dear Hollywood, I watched the Academy Awards on Sunday, and I’m very disappointed in you. I’m not talking about Hugh Jackman’s song-and-dance numbers, or the inane montages and lengthy intros that made an already time-consuming ceremony feel even more protracted. I’m talking about Israel. Let’s be honest here, Hollywood: Israel deserved that Oscar for Best…
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