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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Victor Borge, Now More Than Ever
Back in the days of great Jewish classical musical virtuosi like Jascha Heifetz and Vladimir Horowitz, parents put grim pressure on their children to attain equivalent stardom. Sometimes, the careerist stress attached to childhood music lessons resulted in the unintended creation of musical comedians, like the giddy French-Jewish cabaret pianist Jean Wiéner (1896–1982), who melded…
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Falling With a Thud: Levi on Levi (and Galileo)
‘Falling Bodies” begins with a march recalling “*L’histoire du Soldat” *(“The Soldier’s Tale”), but understandably, without Stravinsky’s jaunty, off-kilter sensibility. Then the two actors begin a dialogue that seems to ask the tasteless question: Did Primo Levi fall to his death faster than a pasta pot? Or, maybe we should rephrase that: Did he fall…
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January 30, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward Rosie Korelitz, a cook in Malbin’s Restaurant on Manhattan’s Grand Street, went to sleep a poor woman, but two days later she woke up rich. When she got out of bed, she was met by a landsman who had just arrived from Mir, a town near Minsk. He gave…
The Latest
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Part I: Writing in My Father’s Footsteps
This is a story of loyalty and betrayal. It’s a story of bravery and subtlety, of mortal stakes on a global stage. It is also a thrilling story filled with “cloak-and-dagger elements,” featuring storied American men both famous and infamous: Harry Truman, Mickey Marcus, Hank Greenspun, Jimmy Hoffa and Charles Winters (the man who was…
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Sweet Voices of Seduction: An Excerpt From ‘Wandering Stars’
To read an essay about “Wandering Stars” by Dara Horn, click here. After the meal, and after Sholom-Meyer’s little speech, and after the cantor’s wife had cleared the table and the cantor said grace, the director felt it was time to get to the matter for which they had come. First he lifted his top…
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Sholom Aleichem: A Star Shines Brightly
To read an excerpt from a new translation of “Wandering Stars,” click here. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sholom Aleichem. To celebrate the occasion, a number of events have been planned, and several new translations of his work will be released. On February 9, “Wandering Stars,” his novel about the…
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A Teacher’s Toolkit for Tackling Tough Issues
On a recent Sunday morning, the third graders at Congregation Brothers of Israel Religious School, in Newtown, Pa., had just settled in for a snack. “There’s this little girl who’s adorable, 8 years old,” recalled Joan Hersch, the school’s principal. “And this boy in her class said: ‘You’re fat. You don’t need that doughnut. I’m…
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Report: Israeli Education Gets a Failing Grade
Israel, you may have heard, produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation, by a large margin — 109 people per 10,000. Twenty-four percent of the Israeli work force holds university degrees, ranking the country third in that category in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland. Israel also claims the…
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Jewish Punk: If Anyone Can, Can Can Can
Among those who raised money for Chabad in response to the murder of the group’s Mumbai representatives last month during the terrorist attack on that city, Patrick A.’s appeal was probably unique: “I had people put dollar bills in my pants while I was onstage, and I started screaming, ‘Put your money in my crotch…
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No More Shoah, Let’s Build A New Israel
The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes By Avraham Burg, translated by Israel Amrani *Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pages, $26.95. * Avraham Burg’s new book, “The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” is maddening: It is by turns incisive and hard-hitting, but also bombastic, vague and repetitious. It is also…
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It’s Me, Isn’t It?
David Pollack of New York has a question about comparative grammar. Why is it, he asks, that in English, if you knock on a door and are asked who you are, you instinctively answer “It’s me” even though grammar would seem to demand that you say “It’s I,” while in Hebrew you instinctively answer “Zeh…
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