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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Donning a Second Skin
When Gitl Braun’s art professor suggested, “Go back to your womb,” Braun took the advice literally. The Hasidic mother of eight sat down in her family’s sukkah, which doubles as her studio, and began studying a photograph of her uterus, taken after her recent hysterectomy. It was Sukkot that week, and the glass-ceilinged space was…
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Journeying to the Other Side
Steve Stern writes a century too late and in the wrong language, and he does so freshly and well. His novels and stories and now a novella, “The North of God” (Melville House), transmute European Yiddish into an American idiom, bridging New World exuberance — or at least that of Stern’s native Memphis, Tenn. —…
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Wigging Out
Ruth Seldin writes from White Plains, N.Y.: “The Hebrew term for a wig, pe’ah nokhrit, strikes me as odd and paradoxical. It is odd because it’s made up of two biblical words, neither of which seems related to a wig: Pe’ah, which refers in the Bible to the hair of the beard or the upper…
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June 6, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Drawing thousands of mourners, Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood hosted its biggest funeral since its inception. It was truly something to see: Leaders of nearly every gang in New York City attended the burial of Max “Kid Twist” Zvibak and his compatriot, Samuel Peytsh, alias Jack Louie or Cyclone Louie. Both…
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Unterzakhn, Part 13
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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Was the Bard a Beard?
Amateur Shakespearologist John Hudson is not the first to question whether the actor William Shakespeare was actually the author of the body of work we’ve come to know as his, but Hudson is the first to suggest that the true author was a Jewish woman named Amelia Bassano Lanier. Of Italian descent, Bassano lived in…
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The Thirty-Six Who Save the World
Last week’s column ended with the question of where the Hebrew-Yiddish expression Lamed-Vavnik — literally, a “thirty-sixer” — comes from. Why is it that, in Jewish legend, the number of hidden tsadikim — or just men on whom the world depends for its existence — is, in every generation, 36? The idea that a small…
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Behind a Veil of Words
Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications By Moshe Halbertal Translated by Jackie Feldman Princeton University Press, 212 pages, $29.95. A few years ago I was sitting on an airplane, and a woman next to me was reading “The Da Vinci Code.” At some point we got to talking, and I…
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As Darkness Fell: Understanding Carlo Levi’s Political Evolution
Fear of Freedom: With the Essay “Fear of Painting” By Carlo Levi Translated from the Italian by Adolphe Gourevitch and Stanislao G. Pugliese Columbia University Press, 176 pages, $18.95. Carlo Levi was a Renaissance Man without a Renaissance: A painter, a writer of essays and fiction, a physician and politician (in the order of his…
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Jacob Gordin, Man and Myth
Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin By Beth Kaplan Syracuse University Press, 304 pages, $24.95. The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America By Jacob Gordin Translated by Ruth Gay Yale University Press, 171 pages, $32.50. In the body of lore surrounding the Yiddish stage, a historical narrative jam-packed with…
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Hungry for Home
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love By Lara Vapnyar Pantheon, 160 pages, $20. Ernest Hemingway once called the stomach “the premier seat of the emotions,” which may explain why people often seek to mitigate adversity by indulging in food. One might expect that the lonely immigrant stomach would be especially sensitive, and indeed,…
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