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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Will of Iron, Heart of Stone: Book Shines Light on Golda Meir’s Harder Side
Golda By Elinor Burkett HarperCollins, 496 pages, $27.95. My moment of eye-openng disillusion with Golda Meir came early on in Elinor Burkett’s new biography of the female premier, titled simply “Golda.” The year was 1950, and Golda Meyerson, as she was then known, was nearing 60 and had just returned from her stint as Israel’s…
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Hip-Hop Group Mirrors Its City
Jaffa is one of the few places in Israel where Jews and Arabs live side by side in relative harmony. This is not to say all is rosy. Bulldozers regularly demolish homes to make way for luxury developments. It’s a city permeated in equal measure by coexistence, gentrification and the Israeli-Arab conflict. The 12-person Jaffa-based…
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What Are the Jewish Issues?
‘We need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you’ve got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don’t need and weren’t even asking for it, you…
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Cherubic Question
Alvin Golub of Brooklyn has a question about cherubs, those little winged figures who, in paintings and illustrations, cavort about the heavens, tooting their horns. Why, he wants to know, does English also have the form “cherubim,” using the Hebrew plural rather than the English one? On the face of it, this may not seem…
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Spitz vs. Phelps: A ‘Tie’?
Mark Spitz has been questioned repeatedly over how he feels now that Michael Phelps has more medals than he does. Holding up the latest cover of Sports Illustrated, featuring a grinning Phelps wearing his eight gold medals around his neck — a re-creation of Spitz’s famous seven-gold-medal pose from 1972 — the elder champion smiled…
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August 29, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The Mansour brothers are an international family of peddlers. One brother, Itzik, began in the trade by peddling dishrags on Essex Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Another brother peddles goods in Manchester, England. Another does the same in Cairo, Egypt. There’s one in Marseilles, France, and yet another…
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Israeli-American Misses Second Chance at Medal But Savors Second Chance at Life
What must it have been like for Rami Zur today, the American-turned-Israeli-turned-US team kayaker, when he found himself eliminated from the Olympics after placing seventh in the men’s kayak single 1,000 meters race? Surely there was some despair and anger. But could there also have been a smile? A chuckle perhaps? Zur, who was born…
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Israeli Wins Olympic Medal, Politicans Fawn
Across Israel today, Jews of varying political stripes breathed a sigh of relief and even shed tears of joy. No, President Ehud Olmert didn’t step down yet. Something better. Israeli windsurfer Shahar Zubari sailed to a bronze medal today after coming in second place in his last race of the 2008 Olympic games in Qingdao….
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Israel Commemorates the Munich Massacre in Beijing
Three decades after the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, this year’s Israeli athletic delegation joined Israeli diplomats and other Jews in commemorating that terrible loss this morning here in Beijing in an event sponsored by the Israeli embassy and the Israel Olympic Committee. According to Haaretz hundreds came to the event, including representatives of Israel’s athletic…
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Beijing’s Chabad Rabbi Helps China See the Light
On my flight from Newark to Beijing a few weeks ago, I noticed a young Hasidic man davening in tefillin. The plane was almost completely packed with Chinese, who must have had no clue what he was doing bowing while wrapped in leather. As one of the few other Jews on the flight, I approached…
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Rabbi Heads to Beijing for Some Face Time With China’s Leaders
First it was Presidents George W. Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy and Shimon Peres coming to Beijing for the Olympics. Now, it’s Rabbi Arthur Schneier. According to a press release, the founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, which promotes religious freedom and human rights, will be fanning himself in the stands at that impending…
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