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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One Who Speaks Does Not Know
The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008 Edited by Philip Zaleski Houghton Mifflin, 256 pages, $14. Bad spiritual writing is easy. Good spiritual writing is hard. And often for the same reasons. First, to write about spirituality is necessarily to attempt to bridge the gap between private and public. Spiritual experiences, especially as distinct from religious…
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A Waltz With the Unredeemed Past
Like many great stories, the animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir” begins with two men in a bar. It’s a few years ago, and Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman is sitting talking to Boaz, his old pal, now a successful accountant in his 40s. Boaz tells of a recurring nightmare he’s had for 20 years. In the…
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The Hyperbolic Philanthropy of James Simon
James Simon (1851–1932), a Jewish cotton magnate from Berlin, was a museum benefactor of such magnitude that his current obscurity is astounding at best and a scandal at worst. As his biography finally emerges from anonymity, so does one story of the Jewish philanthropy that made Berlin a cultural capital. And Berlin museums are hoping…
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For Ostricher And Poorer
Things are so grim these days, I can’t help wondering whether we might find a measure of comfort in history. It’s not a matter of learning from the past — have we ever? — so much as taking heart from the ways in which the human spirit has managed, over time, to prevail amid crushing…
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To Bug and Be Bugged
Annoyance and botheration are never as well expressed as in Yiddish. Here are a few useful idioms. HAK MEER NISHT KA’ TSHAYnik Don’t knock me a tea kettle [i.e., stop rattling on like a kettle that’s boiling dry]. VOOS DRIKstee MEER A KRIZH FIN DAIM? Why are you pressing me in the small of the…
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A Baker’s Dozen: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Doughnut
Hanukkah is over, but not your queries about it. Benzion Ginn writes: “In living through my 84th Hanukkah, I remain stymied by my inability to find an answer to my question concerning the source, origin, derivation, and significance of the word *sufganiyot. *Your skill at rooting out such information would be warmly appreciated.” To tell…
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January 16, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward A brand-new magazine has appeared in New York’s Jewish quarter. Called the Shabbos Journal, it’s brought to you by what is known as the Organization of Shabbos Supporters. The purpose of the magazine is to promote the keeping of Shabbos among the Jews of the Lower East Side. What’s…
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Inner Fire, Outer Ice: The Willful Magic of János Starker
Legend portrays some Hungarian-Jewish musicians as belligerent extroverts, like the late conductors Georg Solti, nicknamed “the screaming skull” by his Chicago Symphony musicians, and George Szell, dubbed “Doctor Cyclops” by his Cleveland Orchestra ensemble. Yet, the mighty cellist János Starker, born in 1924 to a Hungarian-Jewish family in Budapest, has always looked impassive, in total…
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Painter of the Caribbean
Belisario: Sketches of Character By Jackie Ranston The Mill Press, 432 pages, $120. Jewish families who trace their roots back to England, Spain, Portugal and beyond have distinguished themselves for generations as merchants and financiers in the Caribbean. Reminders of the contributions they have made to the varied cultures and societies of the region can…
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Two Minority Reports From 1948
1948: A Soldier’s Tale — The Bloody Road to Jerusalem By Uri Avnery, translated by Christopher Costello Oneworld Press, 400 pages, $19.95. The First Tithe By Israel Eldad, translated by Zev Golan Gefen, 420 pages, $24.95. For better or for worse, the shadows of 1948 still hang over half the world as reminders of what…
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The Return of Menachem Mendel
In a period of economic hardship, such as the one our country has entered, I find myself turning to Sholom Aleichem for consolation. His characters, particularly Tevye the Dairyman and hapless stock investor Menachem Mendel, suffer serious financial losses in Sholom Aleichem’s stories. But the author responds to their condition with great humor, and provides…
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