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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Chewing the Fat in Mecca, Medina, Damascus…
The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East By Neil MacFarquhar Public Affairs, 359 pages, $26.95. Having seen more than enough violence during a decade-long stint as a reporter in the Middle East, Neil MacFarquhar branched out from his beat as Cairo Bureau Chief at…
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Working Ourselves Into a Real State
The term “Jewish state” has been much in the news lately in two different but clearly related contexts. The first is the demand of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as “a Jewish state” before Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resume. The second is the Israeli Knesset’s passing on a…
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A Yiddish Pilgrimage to Quebec
For the first time, an international Yiddish theater festival will convene, bringing together troupes from Israel, Poland, France, Romania, New York and Montreal. The festival is sponsored by and will take place at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal from June 17 – 25, 2009. This historic event will also include lectures, films,…
The Latest
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The End of Jewish Humor
Uh oh. Judaism is dying. Again. The cover of the June 1 “New York Magazine” is devoted to an article declaring “the end of Jewish humor.” The proof? Woody Allen’s new movie, “Whatever Works,” starring Larry David. Allen and David supposedly represents the last of the old generation of Jewish humor rooted in existential discomfort…
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Offbeat Israel: Why Is the Jerusalem Post Producing the ‘Boringist’ Video?
Israel practiced for war on Tuesday As part of a week of nationwide drills that have taken simulations of wartime civil defense operations to every town and city in the country, bomb sirens sounded at 11 a.m. Civilians, including school and kindergarten children, made their way in to bomb shelters or reinforced rooms, in a…
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Our God and God of our Children?
Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal By Dana Evan Kaplan Columbia University Press, 480 pages, $34.50. Orthodox Jews in America By Jeffrey S. Gurock Indiana University Press, 400 pages, $65.00 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback). Since the end of World War II, Dana Evan Kaplan argues in “Contemporary American Judaism,” “not only have the style and substance…
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The Racists Around Us
Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement From the Margins to the Mainstream By Leonard Zeskind Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 672 pages, $37.50. To most Americans, including seasoned political observers, the machinations of white supremacists and professional antisemites are regarded, if at all, as crude carnival theater. After more than three decades…
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Jews in Space
In space no one can hear you scream. But can they hear you kvetch? I’m sitting in a movie theatre, watching the new Star Trek Movie. On screen, a group of Star Fleet recruits, including a Jewish actor or two, climb into a space shuttle and strap themselves in. My eyes wander from neck to…
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Gadding About
Thirty-eight-year-old French-Moroccan Jewish comedian Gad Elmaleh is well on his way to global stardom. His latest film, “Coco,” which opened in Paris last March, is a huge box office hit, and Elmaleh earns kudos not only as an actor, but as writer and director, too. He stars as the title character, a nouveau riche North…
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Darkness Thickens As My Head Changes
If this week’s column strikes some of you as rather technical, you can blame Cantor David Nemtzov of Willowdale, Ontario, for a question he asked about my column of the May 8 issue, in which I pointed out that the Hebrew word *ta’am, *“taste,” is shortened to *tam *in Yiddish by the elision of its…
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And This Is How We Shall Kill You
Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918 (Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) By Grigoris Balakian Translated by Peter Balakian with Aris Sevag Knopf, 509 pages, $35.00. Before we learned to say “never again” came our silence. The unheralded attempt to obliterate the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire ushered in the 20th century: a…
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