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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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‘Sean Ferguson,’ Continued
The file on Sean Ferguson isn’t closed yet. A few weeks ago, as you may remember, I brought to your attention a letter received from Forward reader Eldad Ganin with the information that a Jewish resident of Syracuse named Tracy Ferguson may have invented the tall tale of the Yiddish-speaking immigrant who answered “Shoyn fargesn”…
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Yom HaShoah
Here’s the view from Jerusalem on this somber day, courtesy of Jewlicious. Here is a selection of Yom Hashoah-related news and commentary: — Speaking during a ceremony at Auschwitz, Israeli military chief-of-staff Gabi Ashkenazi says, “We have learned our lesson and we take very seriously the threats of state leaders who call for the destruction…
The Latest
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Film & TV Casting Call: Coen Bros. ISO Bar Mitzvah Boy, Nose-Job Seeker, Wise Rabbi
Minneapolis’s Star-Tribune reports that native sons made good (filmmakers), the Coen brothers, are holding a casting call at the JCC in their hometown of St. Louis Park: Their new film “A Serious Man,” about a Midwestern Jewish family in the late 1960s, will hold an open casting call to fill those roles with performers from…
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Unterzakhn, Part 9
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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Left Behind: A New Book Explores the History of Abandoned Wives
l Enforced Marginality: Jewish Narratives on Abandoned Wives By Bluma Goldstein University of California Press, 235 pages, $39.95. We would do well to remember that when we say “according to the rabbis,” we are historically saying “according to men.” According to the male rabbis who wrote the Talmud and who, for European generations, were the…
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Mameloshn
Key to Yiddish By Miriam Hoffman National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts, Inc., 665 pages, $49.99. Every year, a new crop of students arrives at university summer programs, professing a desire to study Yiddish. While not many actually learn the language, the demand for Yiddish studies courses has been holding steady. Every year also brings…
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High School Unmusical: A Comic Book Artist Draws Adolescence in All Its Awkward Splendor
Ariel Schrag, 28, is almost done with high school. Actually, she graduated from Berkeley High School in California a decade ago, and since then she has earned an English literature degree from Columbia University, authored or edited several books, and spent two years as a staff writer and story editor on Showtime’s hit series “The…
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The Playless Play’s the Thing
Dan Fishback — a 27-year-old performance artist, musician, and recent winner of a significant grant — isn’t surprised when Jews reject him. After all, he is unabashedly gay, resolutely Jewish, strongly critical of Israeli policies and firmly against the Iraq War. His work presses a lot of buttons. He is also not surprised when he’s…
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The Hardest Working Men in Soul Business
Perhaps it was inevitable that David Krakauer, the virtuosic clarinetist and klezmer artist, would team up with Fred Wesley, a funk legend who played trombone and arranged for James Brown in the 1960s and ’70s. After all, Wesley rose to stardom playing on such hits as “Super Bad,” and Krakauer continues to garner equal helpings…
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May 2, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The New York City and Hoboken, N.J., police departments have an All Points Bulletin out on one Dr. Oswald Katz, who is wanted for theft, bigamy and possibly murder. After Katz’s wife, Lina Felestein Katz, died three years ago under mysterious circumstances, the doctor married a widow by the…
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Chain Gangs
One thing about the Passover Seder that never seems to change is that battles are fought between those around the table who insist on singing every stanza of the incrementally repeating chain songs at the Haggadah’s end and those who wish to make shorter shrift of them. My father belonged to the latter camp. By…
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