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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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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Visiting Fidel’s Infidels: Ruth Behar’s Return to the Cuban Home She Never Knew
An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba By Ruth Behar, with photographs by Humberto Mayol Rutgers University Press, 288 pages, $29.95. It is hard to begin a book with a section of “blessings for the dead,” but then it is hard to hail from a community that one never really knew much about. In…
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From Frankfurt to New Haven
A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe By Geoffrey Hartman Fordham University Press, 160 pages, $24.95. Memoirs of displacement often trace shadows cast by the world departed onto the world gained. In his new autobiography, literary theorist Geoffrey Hartman outlines in just this way the lasting effects on his life of…
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Glimpsing the World of Holocaust Memoir
What exactly is “personal history”? Is it a cousin of political history, cultural history or revisionist history — an account steeped in perspective before objective truth — or is it just a fancy term for “memoir”? With a spate of memoirs-turned-fiction rattling book stalls, the Holocaust chronicles, published this year, chosen for review this week…
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May 30, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The tefillin trade in Warsaw is in an uproar after it was discovered that a set sold in the city was not only lacking the scriptures, which normally sit inside the housing, but also contained a tiny crucifix instead. Initially, this set of tefillin was thought to be one…
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