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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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…
The Latest
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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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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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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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In Druze Genes, a Look Back at the Distant Past
Who knew that Israel’s Druze had been holding a key to understanding an important dimension of human history? A new examination of the DNA of this small and insular Levantine group — which follows a secret religion and hardly ever intermarries — has brought us one step closer to better understanding how the world’s various…
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After Late-Onset Tay-Sachs Trial Is Pulled, Parents Pull Together
Perhaps it’s the urgency of Tay-Sachs that brought parents to action when a pharmaceutical company allowed a promising clinical trial to languish. Two years ago, drug company ExSar proposed a trial that would test the chemical pyrimethamine’s ability to restore a vital enzyme in Late Onset Tay-Sachs and Juvenile Tay-Sachs patients. ExSar had three medical…
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Plaintiffs in Breast Cancer Gene Suit Hope To Overturn Patent Policy
‘If you walk out into the street and tell someone that a company owns their genes, they’ll look at you strangely,” said Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action. “But that is exactly what has happened.” Brenner’s group is one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit recently filed in federal court challenging patents controlled…
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Living With LOTS, S.F. Woman Won’t Let Disease Win
Conventional wisdom dictates that runners, like most athletes, improve with experience. A promising freshman cross-country runner might become the school track star by senior year. But that didn’t happen for Vera Pesotchinsky. As a high school student in California, Vera saw the opposite trend: She peaked as a freshman, then spiraled confusingly downward. “I began…
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