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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To Have and To Have Not: An Et Hater at Heart
Jack Zeldis writes from Fresno, Calif., about the verb “to have” — or rather, about the lack of it — in Hebrew. Specifically, he asks me to comment on the two kinds of constructions for a Hebrew sentence like “I have the book”: the “correct” one of “Yesh li ha-sefer,” *which you will almost never…
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March 27, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward Only about five years ago, Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx was a beautiful, dreamy, Garden of Eden of a street, populated by little wooden houses and surrounded by beautiful trees. The street’s residents were no doubt shocked by how quickly their neighborhood changed when the Jews began moving in….
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Avivah Zornberg and the ‘Biblical Unconscious’
Dr. Avivah Zornberg is a Jerusalem-based educator, Torah scholar, and philosopher. Her weekly lectures on the current Torah portion have an impressive following — bringing together, among others, rabbinical students of all denominations, artists and professors. Her lectures, like her books, are a sophisticated mix of traditional Jewish exegesis, Hasidic texts, Western philosophy, poetry and…
The Latest
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Arthur Laurents: Broadway’s Last Ferocious Man Opens a New Version of ‘West Side Story’
In a showbiz world, where backbiting and hissy fits are a way of life, Arthur Laurents (born Arthur Levine), who has directed a revival of “West Side Story” that opens March 19 on Broadway, stands apart. Laurents, who wrote the original book of “West Side Story,” among many other plays and screenplays, will be 92…
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Offbeat Israel: Seductive Water and a Shul That Takes Plastic
Many Israelis considered it sexiest advertisement of the year. According to the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), it is also worthy of a more dubious accolade — the most sexist. It is an advertisement for mineral water brand Eden Springs that features model Bar Refaeli posed seductively in the male protagonist’s kitchen. “The bar you…
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And on the Seventh Day, He Plotzed
If it hadn’t been for a cousin’s protracted bat mitzvah, Slate editor David Plotz might never have picked up the Hebrew Bible. But to pass the time until the Kiddush, he scooped up the translation from the seatback of the synagogue pew, and opened it at random. He happened upon the story of Dinah’s rape…
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Theater That Touches
Imagine a world of darkness and silence. Now, think how it would be to live like that every day. The experience of what it’s really like — the thoughts, struggles and emotions of a deaf-blind person — is what a unique Israeli theater group is sharing via its latest production, “Not by Bread Alone.” Nalaga’at…
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A Yiddish Cat Still Laughing After Hot, Black Fire
Cat in the Ghetto By Rachmil Bryks Translated by S. Morris Engel Persea Books, 176 pages, $14.00 Between his 1939 book of Yiddish poetry, “Yung Grin Mai” (“Young Green May”) and his caustic novella, “A Cat in the Ghetto,” lay the Holocaust: Skaryýsko-Kamienna, where Rachmil Bryks was born in 1912; Lodz, to which he was…
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What You Must Think About Zionism
Between Arab and Jew: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz David Myers, Brandeis University Press 308 pages, $35.00. Ask any Jew you know, even one who has a university degree in Jewish studies, who Simon Rawidowicz is. I am willing bet the response will be, “Simon who?” At best, you may get, “Didn’t he once…
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Watering the Milk of Human Kindness
Oscars or no Oscars, the Hollywood feature film “Milk” directed by Gus Van Sant shows no signs of going away. The DVD of “Milk,” released on March 10 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment, contains extra material illuminating the life of activist Harvey Milk (1930–1978); two new books from Newmarket Press, “Milk: The Shooting Script” and…
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Jigsaw Tales of Wandering Jews
Laish By Aharon Appelfeld, translated by Aloma Halter Schocken Books, 240 pages, $23.95. Celebrated author and Holocaust survivor Aharon Appelfeld commemorates the collective past by populating his creative work with a wide assortment of Jewish characters. In his multifaceted fictional world, Appelfeld constructs a panorama of Jewish life before, during and after the Shoah. In…
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