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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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The Return of Menachem Mendel
In a period of economic hardship, such as the one our country has entered, I find myself turning to Sholom Aleichem for consolation. His characters, particularly Tevye the Dairyman and hapless stock investor Menachem Mendel, suffer serious financial losses in Sholom Aleichem’s stories. But the author responds to their condition with great humor, and provides…
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Art, Truth, Beauty in Schapiro’s Letters
Meyer Schapiro Abroad: Letters to Lillian and Travel Notebooks Edited by Daniel Esterman Getty Publications, 280 pages, $39.95 The much-beloved art historian Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996), born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, immigrated with his family to New York when he was a toddler. In his decades of varied research, on subjects from Romanesque art to Picasso, from…
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Martyrology
Had I been there, I would not have entered the Mumbai Jewish Center. I am invisible there. Worse, the rabbi was trained not to see the likes of me. He would have welcomed someone I’m not. Always, the Nagid says, when you most expect it. I warned my son to watch for the mobs of…
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Stuart the Jewish Turtle
Comics rescued from a burning synagogue in bialystok and hidden in a salt Mine Until after the War. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version. Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His comics appear monthly in The Forward, and his website is www.evcomics.com.
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Jason Isaacs Draws a Line in the Sand
As Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Jason Isaacs shimmers with pale Aryan-looking evil. As Michael Caffee in the Showtime series “Brotherhood,” Isaacs is a violent and mentally unstable gangster. In Vicente Amorim’s new film, “Good,” opening on December 31 and set in 1930s Germany, you might expect Isaacs to play a Nazi. Instead,…
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Jan 9, 2009
75 Years Ago in the Forward In the most recent issue of Tsienist, the monthly journal of the Zionist organization in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Independent Jewish Club began a major advertising campaign calling for a mass meeting of Jews in order to combat prostitution. Of the 3,000 prostitutes in Argentina, it is estimated that…
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Yo La Tengo Show Off Hanukkah’s Indie Rock of Ages
Night falls on Hoboken and candles light for the sixth “8 Nights of Hannukah with Yo La Tengo” at Maxwell’s. Although the Hanukkiah is upfront and proud, this is no Matisyahu concert — not least because musician Ira Kaplan’s mom had to correct the arrangement of the lit candles. But musically too — from the…
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Yid Vid: Hanukkah in Santa Monica — a Great Miracle Didn’t Happen There
As Hanukkah nears its end, the good folks at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, N.J., can breathe easily. Their world-record of 541 dreidels spinning simultaneously has withstood a challenge mounted by Sha’arei Am in Santa Monica, Calif.: Take that, Tom Lehrer! UPDATE: There appears to be some uncertainty as to exactly who holds the dreidel…
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Jan 2, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward Ida Weiner, a 22-year-old bookkeeper, was shot to death by 26-year-old egg seller Izzy Cohen at the train station in Elizabeth, N.J. Cohen had won Weiner’s heart by showering her with presents, though the woman’s parents considered him “not too bright.” Weiner had regrets and broke up with Cohen,…
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Bielskis vs. Hollywood
Here’s a fast-paced Holocaust film with able, big-name stars Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber and directed by the accomplished Edward Zwick, who is sympathetically recounting a gripping tale of tough and resourceful Jews. So why is this reviewer disappointed? By all accounts, the three oldest Bielski brothers were heroic fighters who preserved the lives of…
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Looking at People Looking at the Jewish Body
**The Jewish Body ** By Melvin Konner Nextbook/Schocken, 304 pages, $22. Given the national uproar about pay-for-play politics, let me begin with a disclaimer: Mel Konner is a colleague of mine at Emory University (where I have now been for the past three years as distinguished professor of the liberal arts and sciences, as well…
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