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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Music Babs May Be Bailing, But Israel Still Has Denzel
The AP reports: Barbra Streisand has announced that she will pull out of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration next month. Streisand was one of the big-name guests slated to appear at the Jerusalem convention hosted by President Shimon Peres beginning May 13. The American diva was supposed to perform a rendition of the Hebrew prayer Avinu…
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Unterzakhn, Part 8
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
The Latest
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French-Bred
In the summer of 2005, the suburbs of Paris went up in flames. Television screens and newspapers were filled with images of frustrated Arab and African youths, most often the unemployed children or grandchildren of immigrants, burning and slashing the already dour infrastructure around them. It was a sight that many observers thought mirrored the…
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There’s Something in the Air
Atmospheric Disturbances By Rivka Galchen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $24. Having just finished “Atmospheric Disturbances,” Rivka Galchen’s first novel, I find myself strangely unable to stop thinking about “Bandits,” the last Elmore Leonard novel I read. This is not because the two novels are similar, but because they are so radically dissimilar. Reading…
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Peoplehood: There’s No There There
“We’re here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” — Kurt Vonnegut In the old days, presumably, it was simple: All Jews belonged to klal yisrael, largely because they didn’t have any choice, and we all knew that we were in this thing together. Some were pious, some quite wicked; some…
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Just Say ‘Nu?’: Old Age
The idea that age alone is enough to make you important is fundamental to traditional Jewish life, and people are always wanting to know how old you are, especially if you’re unmarried. VEE ALT ZENT EER? How old are you? is the standard “secular” way of asking a person’s age. If you’re dealing with much…
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Lost and Found
When I first opened the red leather diary, I had no idea of the world that was about to unfold before me and change the course of my life and that of 90-year-old Florence Wolfson Howitt. When I left my apartment one morning in 2003 and encountered a Dumpster full of old steamer trunks, among…
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Language Arts, or Lack Thereof
Detective Story By Imre Kertész Translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson Knopf, 112 pages, $21. The Pathseeker By Imre Kertész Translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson Melville House, 130 pages, $13. Born in 1929 in Budapest, Imre Kertész completed his education at the universities of Auschwitz and Buchenwald before working as a journalist…
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An Interview With Alice and Moshe Shalvi
On the occasion of his 57th wedding anniversary, Moshe Shalvi did something a bit unusual: He produced a mammoth digital encyclopedia as a testament to his wife’s work. There are another 1,600-odd remarkable Jewish women who appear in the encyclopedia, but the project is in some significant ways mainly about Alice Shalvi. An Israel Prize…
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April 25, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward It wasn’t a pogrom; no windows were broken, and no pillows were torn up and emptied. But Jews were getting robbed in Manhattan on Hester and Rivington Streets, and on the streets of Brooklyn. Jewish women were getting the worst of it, fleeced by merchants of all kinds. These…
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A Sweet Passover for All
Forward reader Benzion Ginn is seeking information about the origins of the Yiddish expression a zisn Pesach, “[Have] a sweet Pesach,” as a Passover or pre-Passover greeting. Wondering whether such a greeting is traditional or whether it is rather a modern American invention of “Passover food providers, such as Manischewitz,” Mr. Ginn writes that he…
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