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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Of Domestic Sorceresses and Noisy Beggars
Fred Emil Katz writes from Baltimore: “I have long been struck by the fact that Yiddish has an assortment of words for incompetent men, such as shlemiel, shmegege, and shlimazel, to name just a few. The culture that produced such epithets was one in which men might spend their entire adult lives pursuing a career…
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Film & TV Woody Allen v. American Apparel
The holy rebbe is pissed. Last spring, trendy underwear maker American Apparel, known for its sexually charged advertising, put up a pair of billboard ads that were unusually tame. The billboards, in Los Angeles and New York, featured an image of Woody Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew from his masterpiece Annie Hall, alongside Yiddish…
The Latest
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Unterzakhn, Part 5
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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The Poet’s Art
Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886-1932) is best known as the most innovative and ironic of the modernist Yiddish poets. Closely associated with the group of poets known as Di Yunge (The Young Ones), Halpern was the author of several verse collections, including “In Nyu York” (“In New York”) and “Di Goldene Pave (“The Golden Peacock”). Less well…
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For a Versatile Critic, All the World (Wide Web) is a Stage
The decade-old Internet revolution has radically changed the way in which we present ourselves to one another — sometimes deceitfully, often anonymously and not usually for the better. That’s one thesis in a new book by culture critic Lee Siegel, who knows of what he speaks. In 2006, Siegel was caught and suspended from The…
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A Wiseguy’s Jewish Journey
Louis Ferrante was just a Mafia member from New York City who was serving time, until he began a jail-time journey that resulted in his conversion to Judaism after his release in 2003. In “Unlocked: A Journey From Prison to Proust” (HarperCollins), Ferrante chronicles his trip. Although the memoir focuses mainly on his days in…
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Refocusing Loss Through the Holocaust’s Lens
American Jewish Loss After the Holocaust By Laura Levitt NYU Press, 312 pages, $39. Although the Holocaust is increasingly visible in American life, it remains forbidden territory. We distance ourselves from it, bathing it in Hollywood homilies to the power of human kindness. We draw boundaries around it, housing it in concrete structures, hoping to…
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Listening In to the Field of Jewish Pop, High and Low
In music, as in life, there are cool kids and misfits. And in music, as in life, you sometimes find yourself rooting for the underdog. At least that’s what I found myself doing one recent afternoon, as I alternated between “Let’s Go Shleppin’!” a new CD by Meshugga Beach Party, out of Southern California, and…
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April 4, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward On Monday night, the New Atlantic Dance Hall, located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on Delancey Street between Forsyth and Chrystie Streets, was packed with hundreds of young Jews, all having a fine time, dancing the night away. At about 10 p.m., the manager, Isadore Weissman, noticed the presence…
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Myths and Facts
A common belief that turns out to be a myth, and an assumed myth that might be true: This is the balance sheet of my March 14 column, “Last Names, Lost In Translation.” For believing in the myth, I have been properly chastised by Arthur S. Abramson of Mansfield, Conn., and the novelist Dara Horn….
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Film & TV David’s the Singer, He’s the Rapper
Oded Turgeman, director of the new short film “Song of David,” doesn’t do things the easy way. As a burgeoning film director, he applied to Jerusalem’s most prestigious film school, with a commander in a combat unit as his only prior life experience. Then he moved to America to attend the American Film Institute —the…
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