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 9
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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Left Behind: A New Book Explores the History of Abandoned Wives
l Enforced Marginality: Jewish Narratives on Abandoned Wives By Bluma Goldstein University of California Press, 235 pages, $39.95. We would do well to remember that when we say “according to the rabbis,” we are historically saying “according to men.” According to the male rabbis who wrote the Talmud and who, for European generations, were the…
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Mameloshn
Key to Yiddish By Miriam Hoffman National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts, Inc., 665 pages, $49.99. Every year, a new crop of students arrives at university summer programs, professing a desire to study Yiddish. While not many actually learn the language, the demand for Yiddish studies courses has been holding steady. Every year also brings…
The Latest
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High School Unmusical: A Comic Book Artist Draws Adolescence in All Its Awkward Splendor
Ariel Schrag, 28, is almost done with high school. Actually, she graduated from Berkeley High School in California a decade ago, and since then she has earned an English literature degree from Columbia University, authored or edited several books, and spent two years as a staff writer and story editor on Showtime’s hit series “The…
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The Playless Play’s the Thing
Dan Fishback — a 27-year-old performance artist, musician, and recent winner of a significant grant — isn’t surprised when Jews reject him. After all, he is unabashedly gay, resolutely Jewish, strongly critical of Israeli policies and firmly against the Iraq War. His work presses a lot of buttons. He is also not surprised when he’s…
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The Hardest Working Men in Soul Business
Perhaps it was inevitable that David Krakauer, the virtuosic clarinetist and klezmer artist, would team up with Fred Wesley, a funk legend who played trombone and arranged for James Brown in the 1960s and ’70s. After all, Wesley rose to stardom playing on such hits as “Super Bad,” and Krakauer continues to garner equal helpings…
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May 2, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The New York City and Hoboken, N.J., police departments have an All Points Bulletin out on one Dr. Oswald Katz, who is wanted for theft, bigamy and possibly murder. After Katz’s wife, Lina Felestein Katz, died three years ago under mysterious circumstances, the doctor married a widow by the…
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Chain Gangs
One thing about the Passover Seder that never seems to change is that battles are fought between those around the table who insist on singing every stanza of the incrementally repeating chain songs at the Haggadah’s end and those who wish to make shorter shrift of them. My father belonged to the latter camp. By…
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Books in Brief
“Memory” By Philippe Grimbert Simon & Schuster, 176 pages, $19.95 If I had an imaginary best friend, the words I’d use to describe him or her would be long, and the conversations we would have could border on a philosophical treatise. Fortunately, Philippe Grimbert’s novel “Memory,” recently translated into English, argues a good case for…
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Music Babs May Be Bailing, But Israel Still Has Denzel
The AP reports: Barbra Streisand has announced that she will pull out of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration next month. Streisand was one of the big-name guests slated to appear at the Jerusalem convention hosted by President Shimon Peres beginning May 13. The American diva was supposed to perform a rendition of the Hebrew prayer Avinu…
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Unterzakhn, Part 8
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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