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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The Playless Play’s the Thing
Dan Fishback — a 27-year-old performance artist, musician, and recent winner of a significant grant — isn’t surprised when Jews reject him. After all, he is unabashedly gay, resolutely Jewish, strongly critical of Israeli policies and firmly against the Iraq War. His work presses a lot of buttons. He is also not surprised when he’s…
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The Hardest Working Men in Soul Business
Perhaps it was inevitable that David Krakauer, the virtuosic clarinetist and klezmer artist, would team up with Fred Wesley, a funk legend who played trombone and arranged for James Brown in the 1960s and ’70s. After all, Wesley rose to stardom playing on such hits as “Super Bad,” and Krakauer continues to garner equal helpings…
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May 2, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The New York City and Hoboken, N.J., police departments have an All Points Bulletin out on one Dr. Oswald Katz, who is wanted for theft, bigamy and possibly murder. After Katz’s wife, Lina Felestein Katz, died three years ago under mysterious circumstances, the doctor married a widow by the…
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Chain Gangs
One thing about the Passover Seder that never seems to change is that battles are fought between those around the table who insist on singing every stanza of the incrementally repeating chain songs at the Haggadah’s end and those who wish to make shorter shrift of them. My father belonged to the latter camp. By…
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Books in Brief
“Memory” By Philippe Grimbert Simon & Schuster, 176 pages, $19.95 If I had an imaginary best friend, the words I’d use to describe him or her would be long, and the conversations we would have could border on a philosophical treatise. Fortunately, Philippe Grimbert’s novel “Memory,” recently translated into English, argues a good case for…
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Music Babs May Be Bailing, But Israel Still Has Denzel
The AP reports: Barbra Streisand has announced that she will pull out of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration next month. Streisand was one of the big-name guests slated to appear at the Jerusalem convention hosted by President Shimon Peres beginning May 13. The American diva was supposed to perform a rendition of the Hebrew prayer Avinu…
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Unterzakhn, Part 8
Read this week’s installment of Leela Corman’s new graphic novel, “Unterzakhn,” which is being serialized in the Forward. (Or, to start at the very beginning, click here). CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW
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French-Bred
In the summer of 2005, the suburbs of Paris went up in flames. Television screens and newspapers were filled with images of frustrated Arab and African youths, most often the unemployed children or grandchildren of immigrants, burning and slashing the already dour infrastructure around them. It was a sight that many observers thought mirrored the…
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There’s Something in the Air
Atmospheric Disturbances By Rivka Galchen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $24. Having just finished “Atmospheric Disturbances,” Rivka Galchen’s first novel, I find myself strangely unable to stop thinking about “Bandits,” the last Elmore Leonard novel I read. This is not because the two novels are similar, but because they are so radically dissimilar. Reading…
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Peoplehood: There’s No There There
“We’re here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” — Kurt Vonnegut In the old days, presumably, it was simple: All Jews belonged to klal yisrael, largely because they didn’t have any choice, and we all knew that we were in this thing together. Some were pious, some quite wicked; some…
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Just Say ‘Nu?’: Old Age
The idea that age alone is enough to make you important is fundamental to traditional Jewish life, and people are always wanting to know how old you are, especially if you’re unmarried. VEE ALT ZENT EER? How old are you? is the standard “secular” way of asking a person’s age. If you’re dealing with much…
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