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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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…
The Latest
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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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Art, Truth, Beauty in Schapiro’s Letters
Meyer Schapiro Abroad: Letters to Lillian and Travel Notebooks Edited by Daniel Esterman Getty Publications, 280 pages, $39.95 The much-beloved art historian Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996), born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, immigrated with his family to New York when he was a toddler. In his decades of varied research, on subjects from Romanesque art to Picasso, from…
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Martyrology
Had I been there, I would not have entered the Mumbai Jewish Center. I am invisible there. Worse, the rabbi was trained not to see the likes of me. He would have welcomed someone I’m not. Always, the Nagid says, when you most expect it. I warned my son to watch for the mobs of…
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Stuart the Jewish Turtle
Comics rescued from a burning synagogue in bialystok and hidden in a salt Mine Until after the War. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version. Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His comics appear monthly in The Forward, and his website is www.evcomics.com.
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Jason Isaacs Draws a Line in the Sand
As Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Jason Isaacs shimmers with pale Aryan-looking evil. As Michael Caffee in the Showtime series “Brotherhood,” Isaacs is a violent and mentally unstable gangster. In Vicente Amorim’s new film, “Good,” opening on December 31 and set in 1930s Germany, you might expect Isaacs to play a Nazi. Instead,…
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Jan 9, 2009
75 Years Ago in the Forward In the most recent issue of Tsienist, the monthly journal of the Zionist organization in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Independent Jewish Club began a major advertising campaign calling for a mass meeting of Jews in order to combat prostitution. Of the 3,000 prostitutes in Argentina, it is estimated that…
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Yo La Tengo Show Off Hanukkah’s Indie Rock of Ages
Night falls on Hoboken and candles light for the sixth “8 Nights of Hannukah with Yo La Tengo” at Maxwell’s. Although the Hanukkiah is upfront and proud, this is no Matisyahu concert — not least because musician Ira Kaplan’s mom had to correct the arrangement of the lit candles. But musically too — from the…
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Yid Vid: Hanukkah in Santa Monica — a Great Miracle Didn’t Happen There
As Hanukkah nears its end, the good folks at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, N.J., can breathe easily. Their world-record of 541 dreidels spinning simultaneously has withstood a challenge mounted by Sha’arei Am in Santa Monica, Calif.: Take that, Tom Lehrer! UPDATE: There appears to be some uncertainty as to exactly who holds the dreidel…
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