Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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Picking @ Shtrudel
In his August 19 column, The New York Times’s venerable language commentator William Safire cites a few examples, taken from a Web site, of words used in different languages to denote the e-mail sign @ that is known in English as “at.” In Czech, writes Mr. Safire, @ is zavinac, meaning “a herring wrapped around…
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From Freeing Tibet to Rebooting Judaism
Erin Potts got her start in activism at a very young age — and on a very big stage. When Potts was only 21, she co-founded the Milarepa Fund with Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. The fund used music to raise awareness about the plight of Chinese-occupied Tibet, organizing a series of star-studded Tibetan…
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Music Northern State’s Rap Against J.A.P.
Young Jeezy may prefer Cristal and Northern State may “enjoy a lemonade spritzer with Eliot Spitzer,” but outside of alcohol choices, stereotypes concerning hip-hop stars and J.A.P.’s are surprisingly similar. That theme is one that concerns Northern State, a trio of female rappers from Long Island (two of whom are Jewish). Instead of dwelling on…
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Film & TV Scarlett on Woody: ‘We Have a Lot in Common’
She’s a sultry starlet. He’s a neurotic nebbish. But really Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen are just two peas in a pod, the actress tells USA Today: “I just adore Woody,” she says. “We have a lot in common. We’re New Yorkers, Jewish. We have a very easygoing relationship. “I’ve seen things like, ‘Are you…
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August 24, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward Solomon Teitler and his wife, Celeste, were recently arrived immigrants from Vienna. Because the Teitlers were people of means, they were able to find a good home quickly. Shortly thereafter, while enjoying themselves in a Hungarian café on Manhattan’s Second Avenue, they made the acquaintance of one Arthur Levy,…
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Books Goodbye, Grace
Writer Grace Paley died yesterday. A New York Times obit says that, “In a sense, her work was about what happened to the women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind.” Paley was 84.
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A Theater of War
Shloyme Zynstein was a powerful force in the rebirth of Jewish culture in the displaced persons camps of postwar Germany. Zynstein, his wife, Rachel, and their two young children lived at the Bamberg DP Camp in the American section of occupied Germany from 1945 to 1947, and it was there that he founded the Bamberg…
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For Dystonia Sufferers, New Film Hits a Nerve
When she was 10, Miriam Kimmelman began to lose control of her body; it would twist into a variety of abnormal postures. The symptoms progressed fast. Before long, she could walk only backward. After seeing about 100 doctors in two years, she was diagnosed with dystonia, a neurological disorder that affects more than 300,000 Americans….
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Crocodiling in Esperanto On the Streets of Hanoi
Hanoi, Vietnam – A few weeks ago, on a sultry day in the western reaches of Hanoi, I crocodiled with an Australian. I also alligatored with a Nepalese and, with a charming young woman from Madagascar, I caymaned — in French. Most of the time, however, I was trying hard to speak Esperanto, the most…
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Yid Vid: Was Moses a Satmar?
Ever wonder whether Moses was a Hasid or a Misnagid? Herewith, the answer: Hat tip: Der Royter Rov
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Revising Revisionist History
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy By Adam Tooze Viking, 832 pages, $32.95. A Shadow of Red: Communism and the Blacklist in Radio and Television By David Everitt Ivan R. Dee, 432 pages, $27.50. A cursory search of the Internet, which is the latest and perhaps most perplexing form…
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