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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Kohane Rocks Exotic and Hot
New Midlife Crisis Kohane of Newark Joodayah Records, 2008 The jacket cover of “New Midlife Crisis,” the debut CD by Kohane of Newark, scheduled for release in October, features an image of a larger-than-life bird’s eye view of a rumpled and stained velvet skullcap, doubtless donned at some Jewish function that took place around the…
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Spiritual Encounters of a Philosopher of Science
Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life By Hilary Putnam Indiana University Press, 2008 Hilary Putnam is one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers, known worldwide for his many contributions to diverse areas of philosophy, from ethics to philosophy of mind to the relationship between science and the real world. Equally well known among…
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The Rest of ‘The Rest Is Commentary’
In the September 10 issue of The New York Times, the well-known journalist Jeffrey Goldberg (whose career got its start in these pages) published a long and grim op-ed column about the dangers of a terrorist nuclear attack on American soil. Compared with such a prospect, he wrote, “Everything else — Fannie Mae, health care…
The Latest
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October 3, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward An all-day shootout on the streets of Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood last Sunday was so violent that people were too frightened to come out of their apartments, so they stayed inside all day. The shootout, which began at around 9 a.m., was between former members of Kid Twist’s gang who…
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Books And the Emmy Goes to… Mr. Warmth
Legendary insult comedian Don Rickles took home an Emmy tonight for “Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program” for the documentary “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project,” which is, of course, about him. “It’s a mistake,” Rickles said. “I’ve been in the business 55 years and the biggest award I got was an…
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Pow! Take That, Old Superhero Clichés!
JEWS AND AMERICAN COMICS Edited by Paul Buhle New Press, 2008 A review in comic strip form by Eli Valley. Click on the thumbnail below for a larger version: Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His comics, which are frequently published in Jewcy, can be seen at his Web site at www.evcomics.com.
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Answers in the Seekers’ Language
For the Love of God and People: A Philosophy of Jewish Law By Elliot Dorff Jewish Publication Society, 296 pages, $35. Why care about Jewish observance? Growing up some years back in the world of Conservative Judaism, I rarely heard an answer to the question. The few explanations that were provided usually presupposed a belief…
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Disraeli, Please Come Home
Benjamin Disraeli By Adam Kirsch Schocken/Nextbook, 288 pages, $21. Queen Victoria once asked Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century British prime minister, about his “real” religion. “You were born a Jew and you forsook your great people,” she said. “Now you are a member of the Church of England, but no one believes that you are a…
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A Wife, Down and Out in Berlin
This Must Be the Place By Anna Winger Riverhead Books, 303 pages, $24.95. Days after moving to Berlin from Brooklyn this summer, I fell into a deep funk. It was the kind of can’t-get-out-of-bed depression where at 5 p.m. you realize that you haven’t left the apartment all day — except once, and that was…
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The Christian Soldiers of the Holy City
Knights of Jerusalem: The Crusading Order of Hospitallers, 1100-1565 By David Nicolle Osprey Publishing, 224 pages, $25.95. They began as a charitable organization, a brotherhood charged with caring for Jerusalem’s indigent pilgrims before the First Crusade. They ended the Crusades as warlords, infamous for their violence and greed. This role reversal would seem to be…
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Art That Is at Once Lush and Spare
As a graphic artist, Mark Podwal has long been taken with ritual and mysticism, mythology and superstition, angels and magic — particularly as these implicate and influence Jewish tradition via midrash and Kabbalah. Jewish folk beliefs are central to his work. But to Podwal, folk traditions are a vehicle in a larger enterprise: nothing less…
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