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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Yid Vid: ‘Jewno’
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Unterzakhn, Part 3
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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Haredi Life, Too Purely Rendered
The Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, don’t go to the movies. This is partly on account of the silver screen’s abundant displays of what is known among these communities as pritsus — that is, sex and general profanity — but it is also because any such frivolous entertainment is considered “bittul-Torah,” a prohibited waste of precious…
The Latest
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A New Play Lifts Veil on Insular Syrian-Jewish Community
David Adjmi’s newest play terrifies him. It’s provocative and unflinching in its representation of a specific Jewish community as materialistic, close-minded, insular to a fault. Granted, among Adjmi’s other produced works — “The Evildoers,” which packed up a run at Yale Repertory Theatre this past month, and “Elective Affinities,” his meditation following the attacks of…
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A Place Called Ashkenaz
On March 20, Purim will be celebrated in Ashkenaz. This Ashkenaz, however, refers not to the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe but to a performance space in Berkeley, Calif., named Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center. This year, the festival of Esther and Mordechai will be celebrated there with a party featuring Shivat…
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A Melody of Jewish Meditation
When I asked composer Daniel David Feinsmith what his former life as a Zen monk had entailed, he had a ready answer. “Well,” he told me by phone from San Francisco, “it involved celibacy. It involved meditation — hours facing a blank wall. And it involved frugality.” Normally, the word “celibacy” would be the showstopper…
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David Yazbek’s Other, Unnoticed Career
David Yazbek, the acclaimed composer and pianist, is no stranger to accolades and notoriety. His work on the Broadway musicals “The Full Monty” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” has earned him two Tony nominations (“Two Time Tony Award Loser!” his Web site proclaims); he’s won an Emmy for his comedy writing on “Late Show With David…
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In the Beginning, There Was Vitebsk
Vitebsk: The Life of Art By Aleksandra Shatskikh, translated by Katherine Foshko Tsan Yale University Press, 408 pages, $55. In the beginning, otherwise known as the year 988, Rus converted to Christianity, Vitebsk was founded and 1,000 years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, which was good. Today a backwater of fascist Belarus, Vitebsk had always…
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If He Had World Enough and Time
A tip for the brainy, leisurewear-oriented hipster: Type George Steiner’s name into Amazon.com’s search engine, and you’ll find, among his books of cultural and literary criticism, a novel about Hitler, a memoir titled “Errata: An Examined Life” and, of especial curiosity, a T-shirt emblazoned with a cherry-red heart that’s framed by the words “I Love…
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What if Hitler Were a Jewish Supremacist?
The Jewish Messiah By Arnon Grunberg, translated by Sam Garrett Penguin Press, 470 pages, $27.95. ‘The biggest mistake fascism made was to turn against the Israelite,” a character says in Arnon Grunberg’s new novel, “The Jewish Messiah.” “If fascism had absorbed the Israelite, if fascism had said to the Israelite: Come, let us join forces,…
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Gershom Scholem’s Life, in His Own Words
Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919 By Gershom Scholem Edited and translated by Anthony David Skinner The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 384 pages, $39.95. In the early 1970s, Vienna-born writer and memoirist Jakov Lind returned to Israel after experiencing a mystical vision “on a very fine day about 3 in…
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