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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Just Say ‘Nu?’: Food and Drink
The main problem with eating all the time is that it can get in the way of talking. Contrary to popular belief, Yiddish-speakers aren’t obsessed with food; they’re obsessed with talking about food, especially what’s wrong with it: it’s the memory of food that attracts them. Much like bores who haunt cocktail parties, telling you…
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Touring America’s Retirement Communities
Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias By Andrew D. Blechman Atlantic Monthly Press, 256 pages, $25. Del Webb’s Sun Cities in the Arizona desert; The Villages north of Orlando, Fla.; a new Catholic-themed town called Ave Maria: Home to nearly 12 million people, these are America’s largest and most popular gated retirement communities, or, as…
The Latest
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The Joys of Being Taken To Task
Among the thousands of readers who, over the years, have written me with their queries, criticisms, comments and encouragement, there are a small number of regulars who keep returning. Although I have never carried on a personal correspondence with any of them (as much as I might like to, I simply don’t have the time…
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May 22, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Fred Elbaum, a resident of Manhattan’s Harlem area, was shocked after finding out that his 14- year-old boy, Jonny, was arrested for tearing out wires belonging to the Edison Electric Company. Appearing in Manhattan Children’s Court to plead his son’s case, Elbaum argued that Jonny wasn’t at all a…
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Books Quizzing Obama on the State of Israel — and the State of His Kishkes
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg (who in the 1990s wrote for this rag) chatted this weekend with Barack Obama about Israel and Jewish issues. Goldberg, who recently penned a widely discussed article for the Atlantic looking at Israel’s difficult choices through the prism of the tensions between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and writer David Grossman, finds…
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Unterzakhn, Part 11
Read this week’s installment of Leela Corman’s new graphic novel, “Unterzakhn,” which is being serialized in the Forward. (Or, to start at the very beginning, click here). CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW
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Aaron David Miller on ‘Jews and Power’
On May 18, Nextbook, the Jewish cultural organization, will present its second annual festival of ideas on the topic of “Jews and Power.” In advance of the event — which will feature, among others, Avivah Zornberg on political rebellion in the Bible, authors Shalom Auslander and Rebecca Goldstein on the authority and revolt of the…
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Ruth Wisse on ‘Jews and Power’
On May 18, Nextbook, the Jewish cultural organization, will present its second annual festival of ideas on the topic of “Jews and Power.” In advance of the event — which will feature, among others, Avivah Zornberg on political rebellion in the Bible, authors Shalom Auslander and Rebecca Goldstein on the authority and revolt of the…
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Israeli Arabs and Hebrew
An unsigned e-mailer has sent me an article that appeared recently in the English-language edition of the daily Hebrew newspaper Haaretz. It’s about the use of Hebrew by Israeli Arabs, and since I had already noticed in it the Hebrew Haaretz myself and considered writing about it in these pages, the idea for this column…
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Off 2nd Avenue
Messiahs of 1933: How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity Through Satire By Joel Schechter Temple University Press, 304 pages, $39.95. In Moishe Nadir’s 1928 Yiddish play, “Messiah in America,” theater producer Menachem Yosef and his assistant, Jack “the Bluffer,” concoct a scheme to present the messiah onstage, dressing up a bearded Jewish immigrant to play…
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‘Israel Is Slightly Smaller Than China,’ and Other Misconceptions
Journalist Donna Rosenthal was inspired to write “The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land” when a CNN producer (her former journalism student) told her: “I’m confused, and our viewers are confused. We have footage of Jews who look like Arabs and Arabs who look like Jews. We have black Jews, and bearded 16th-century-looking Jews…
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