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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Tropical Refuge
As early as 1935, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the dictator who led the Dominican Republic from 1930 through 1961, suggested that his country would welcome as many as 100,000 refugees from Europe. It might seem ironic that Trujillo, known for his repressive regime, would invite Jews to the island, promising them religious freedom, but in…
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In Brief
Complete Minimal Poems By Aram Saroyan Ugly Duckling Presse, 280 pages, $20. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and so poetry needed to be created, too, to describe those two entities and their interaction. And Aram Saroyan arose and said, “Let there be lighght,” and there was, and Congress saw that…
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Service Without a Smile
Picture the stereotypical Israeli soldier — macho, muscular and, of course, male. But young Israeli women do up to two years of compulsory military service (men do three), some of them spending their time in the simmering West Bank. And as the powerful documentary “To See If I’m Smiling” makes clear, the women who serve…
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June 13, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Don’t ask Louie Moscowitz and Rosie Venitsky to try using a matchmaker again. Getting burned once was apparently enough. Venitsky claims that her bank account is $215 lighter because of a matchmaker by the name of Moyshe Kablitsky. And if it hadn’t been for this matchmaker, Moscowitz wouldn’t be…
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Kettle’s On!
Forward reader Mark Hurvitz writes in an e-mail: “The question of the Yiddish expression hakn a tshaynik [literally, to hit, strike or hack at a teakettle] in the sense of to bother someone came up recently with some friends because Michael Chabon uses a translation of it in his novel ‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.’ Why,…
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Books Obama Digs Roth, But McCain Prefers Wouk
A few weeks ago, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg — who has lately established himself as a key contender for the title of Mr. Jewish Journalist — grilled Barack Obama about Israel and other topics of Jewish interest. Now, he covers some of the same ground with John McCain. Since Obama, in his interview, volunteered that…
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Unterzakhn, Part 14
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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A Stroll Down Memory Lane
The past, it’s been said, is a foreign country whose sensibility and texture all too often elude the contemporary imagination. But for those of us willing to give history a try, there are any number of ways to embrace its pleasures and attend to its cautions. We can read about it, page through photo albums…
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Back in the Saddle: An Author Peers Behind a Famous Horse’s Mane and Finds a Jewish Tale
A few years ago, I traveled to Crazy Horse, S.D., to visit the memorial honoring the great American Indian who helped defeat Custer. It is a massive stone carving of Crazy Horse on his steed — or at least it will be, someday, when it’s finished. Work began in 1948, when Lakota chief Henry Standing…
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A Filmmaker’s ‘Blues’ Prompts Traditionalists To See Red
Nina Paley was not looking for an international controversy. Nevertheless, in April, when the now 40-year-old Jewish cartoonist screened her latest film, “Sita Sings the Blues,” at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, she said that’s precisely what she got. A highly experimental animated work that Paley created on her laptop, “Sita” draws parallels between the…
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Chance Meeting Yields Harmonious Collaboration
As a young man working in his family’s textile business, Gerard Edery once traveled the world looking for raw material that could be assembled into new and attractive shapes. It’s been more than 15 years since Edery left textiles for a career in music, but in some ways, his life hasn’t changed that much. He…
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