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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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…
The Latest
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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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March 20, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward When Joseph Leibel, a Jewish fruit peddler from Hartford, Conn., met Becky Betsalel, he fell for her. She felt the same, and together they were destined to go under the wedding canopy. But Leibel traveled in the state to Meriden on business, and there he made the acquaintance of…
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Offbeat Israel: The Bollywood-Style Video Taking Israel By Storm
The video that has Israel talking this week is, believe it or not, a Bollywood-style musical by the country’s leading weapon’s manufacturer, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It has emerged that at Aero India, a trade fair organized last month by India’s Ministry of Defense, Rafael screened a movie of Israeli dancers in Indian costumes singing…
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Felix Mendelssohn: Music That ‘Keeps Working’
Felix Mendelssohn was still alive when the New York Philharmonic was founded in 1842. “He most certainly influenced our orchestra from its inception,” Philharmonic archivist Barbara Haws told the Forward. “Our very first program featured Mendelssohn. In fact, before his death in 1848, a total of six Mendelssohn works were performed in our first 14…
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Aharon Appelfeld on Living and Dying in Jerusalem
Though he recently turned 77, Aharon Appelfeld remains one of modern Hebrew literature’s freshest voices. His work has been celebrated in Israel and around the world by prize committees, critics and other writers, including his friend Philip Roth. The nearly three dozen books to his name have been translated into numerous languages, making him one…
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Purim Podcast
The Backward’s Purim Spoof podcast, featuring Backward editors Anthony Weiss and Daniel Friedman in conversation with Gabrielle Birkner, looks at the Anti-Defamation League’s decision to honor Bernard Madoff, the retirement of the Elders of Zion, Adam Sandler’s meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Jay-Z’s new Jewish dating Web site, and the existence of hot Israeli models….
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Offbeat Israel: Mishloach Manot for Hard Times
The animation director of Waltz With Bashir has released a short movie intended to rally opinion against the Gaza blockade. Yoni Goodman’s new film, “Closed Zone,” consists of animation and real footage from Gaza, and addresses the lack of freedom of movement for Gazans. In it, a young boy pursues a flying bird — a…
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