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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New Egalitarian Yeshiva Prepares To Go Full Time
On a recent weekday summer morning on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the second floor of West End Synagogue was buzzing. Thirty-six students, divided into pairs, clustered around tables, poring over open Talmuds. Some of the beginners flipped through lexicons, trying to puzzle out obscure words, while more advanced students debated that day’s text and compared…
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Rabbis Focus on Professional Development
Moses was probably an introvert. That was one of the conclusions reached by the rabbis who gathered at a pro fessional development seminar in Manhattan this summer. As part of the seminar, the rabbis took the Myers-Briggs personality test, which measures how introspective, intuitive and perceptive people are, to better understand how they operated in…
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Israel Textbook Paints a Complex Portrait
A new textbook written for young students presents a nuanced, critical and yet beautiful portrait of Israel, one that is designed to encourage these students to visit the country and embrace their Jewish heritage. “Artzeinu: An Israel Encounter” is an insider’s guide to the geography, history and culture of Israel, documenting the country that exists…
The Latest
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As Arabic Makes Gains on Campus, Jewish Students Sign Up
After befriending a Palestinian from Ramallah in high school, Tahl Mayer — whose parents are Israeli — decided that he wanted to study Arabic in college. “It’s very important to learn languages,” he said, “because they help bridge the gap between cultures.” Mayer is hardly alone: An increasing number of Jewish students are studying Arabic…
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Farm School Brings Students Back to Their Roots
The Jewish Farm School is a new organization that hopes to bring Jews back to their agricultural roots by giving them a taste of what it means to grow their own food and reconnect with the soil. “We’re missing the people’s deep connection to the land and not engaging in the process of creating the…
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High School Program Strives To Keep Teens Connected
A high-school program that builds upon the success of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, one of the largest networks of Jewish adult education, is helping to keep Jewish teenagers connected to their faith and heritage. The Florence Melton Communi-teen High School — named after the late Florence Melton, a pioneer in Jewish education — encourages…
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Program Aids College-Bound Hasidim
Young men and women raised in Hasidic communities face unique challenges if they want to attend college: Their devoutly religious primary and secondary schools often avoid secular subjects, and many of these schools teach classes in Yiddish rather than English. Students who wish to leave their insular religious communities to study at a university often…
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Y.U. Undergrads Create Shoah Project
Two Yeshiva University students have helped create an outreach project that combines history lessons and multimedia techniques to provide Holocaust education for public high-school students and others outside the mainstream Jewish culture. Avi Kopstic and Yudit Davidovits helped develop the Holocaust Education Outreach Project. Run by college students, the project is modeled after an earlier…
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Chicago Preschool Offers Hebrew-Language Immersion — for Toddlers
For Etty Dolgin, longtime director of Chicago’s Con-servative-affiliated Moadon Kol Chadash supplementary school, it didn’t make sense that religious schools typically waited until second or third grade to start teaching Hebrew. “Why are we waiting till they’re 7 or 8?” she asked. “After all, they learn so much better when they’re younger, and they have more…
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Study Provides Snapshot of Struggling Supplementary Schools
America’s Jewish supplementary schools are struggling to remain relevant as a torpid American economy and higher rates of intermarriage and religious apathy take their toll. Many Conservative and Reform Jewish parents are opting out of giving their children a religious education. Supplementary schools, also known as Hebrew schools or complementary schools, operate for a few…
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August 22, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Isaac Sheinfeld, 22, was scheduled to marry 18-year-old Ella Winkler, but at the last minute he got cold feet and disappeared. Having made all the arrangements for a wedding, Winkler was furious and had Sheinfeld arrested for breach of promise. As the police brought him into the Essex Market…
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Yiddish רבנישע כּתבֿים ווײַזן אומגעריכטע פֿאַרבינדונגען צווישן ייִדיש און לאַדינאָRabbinical texts reveal surprising links between Yiddish and Ladino
לויט אַ נײַ בוך פֿאָרשונגען האָבן טראַדיציאָנאַליסטן אין ביידע עדות געהאַלטן, אַז ייִדן מוזן אָפּהיטן זייער גערעדט לשון
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