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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Piano Man
Listening to “Her First Dance,” pianist Misha Alperin’s latest recording for the ECM label, I was reminded of an old story about the late jazz trombonist Vic Dickenson. Dickenson was a veteran of the swing era who at some point found himself playing in a band led by Don Ellis, an experimental composer and trumpeter….
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Heinrich Heine’s Excellent Adventure
Travel Pictures By Heinrich Heine Translated from the German by Peter Wortsman Archipelago Books, 375 pages, $17. At the age of 27 and already a failure at the textile business, Heinrich Heine abandoned his law studies, first at Bonn and then at Göttingen, to hike around the Harz Mountains for three weeks. This excursion, like…
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Imperfect Idyll: Remembering A Vacation That Made History
Many of us tend to think of our vacation as an inalienable right, up there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But history suggests otherwise, making it abundantly clear that the vacation is a social institution much like any other, subject to bias and prejudice, nastiness and ill will. The site of unfettered…
The Latest
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Trader Joe’s Treasure
About a year and a half ago, Portland, Ore.-based artist Harrell Fletcher went to his local Trader Joe’s to do some shopping. By the time he went home, it was with far more than a few bags of groceries. Sitting in front of the market and surrounded by some of his drawings was Michael Patterson-Carver,…
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More Than 50 Years Later, Still a Classic
In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, ErgoMedia has released on DVD what could be called the first classic of Israeli cinema: “Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer.” At the time of the film’s original release, in 1955, The New York Times called it “an uncommonly forthright and absorbing tribute to largely unsung valor.”…
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July 11, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Cantor A.A. Rosenbloom of Minneapolis is on the outs with his congregation on account of the fact that he got caught going to a hayzl, or a brothel. Not only did he go to a hayzl, but he also got drunk and got into a fistfight with the pimp….
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The Origins of Ashkenaz
Sol Schindler of Bethesda, Md., writes: “Paul Kriwaczek tells us in his book ‘In Search of Zarathustra: Across Iran and Central Asia To Find the World’s First Prophet’ that the Hebrew word ashkenazi originally meant a Scythian. I myself always thought it meant a German. Did ancient Hebrew speakers use one term to describe all…
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Sacred Fusion: Jewish and Muslim Melodies Mingle Easily at Moroccan Music Festival
Earlier in the life of this historic city, it wouldn’t have been odd to hear a Sephardic Jewish melody and the Muslim call to prayer ring out and interweave simultaneously. Fes, widely considered Morocco’s spiritual and intellectual capital, was once home to Maimonides himself. One still can walk through the Mellah, or Jewish section, of…
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The Dynamic Duo Behind Poland’s Jewish Revival
Wojtek and Malgosia Ornat are pioneers in the promotion of Jewish culture and Jewish-themed tourism in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland. Today, the Ornats, who in 1992 opened the first Jewish-style café in Krakow, run the popular Klezmer Hois café-hotel-restaurant, a Jewish publishing house called Austeria, and Jewish bookstores in Krakow and…
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A Forgotten Conductor’s Triumphant Return
Sometimes, historic recordings are more than just opportunities to hear great forgotten performances. The just completed 43-volume “Karel Ancerl Gold Edition” of CDs from Supraphon (www.supraphon.com; distributed in the United States by www.qualiton.com) conducted by the Czech maestro Karel Ancerl is a case in point. The new DVD — “Who Is Karel Ancerl?” — also…
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Homeschool of Rock
When Yuda Piamenta was 15, he skipped a day of school. His father, legendary Israeli guitarist Yossi Piamenta, punished his son in somewhat unusual fashion: He picked up a guitar, handed another one to Yuda and instructed him to start playing. Yossi then played a series of dissonant chords over Yuda’s melody. The cacophony might…
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