Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Film & TV Borat in Rehab, Eva Mendes’s Jew Fetish and Other Tales From the MTV Movie Awards
For one night, at least, MTV may as well have been the Jewish Television Network. Yesterday’s MTV Movie Awards had an unusually large number of young, hip celebrity Jews taking center-stage. The show was hosted by comedian-of-the-moment Sarah Silverman, who, in typical faux-innocent fashion, mercilessly roasted Paris Hilton (conveniently in attendance). Silverman noted — to…
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Jewish Mother, R.I.P.
The Jewish Mother, one of the most dominating icons of 20th-century American popular culture, has died. News of her death was released, inadvertently, by Brandeis University history professor Joyce Antler in “You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother.” Mother — also known as MA!!!!! — was 90 years old, give…
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Six Days, 40 Years of Controversy
The weeks following the Six Day War found Israelis not sure if they were awake or dreaming. Everyone spoke of miracles, of the supernatural forces that had guided the Jewish army to such overwhelming victory. The names of the generals — Rabin, Hod, Sharon, Peled — resounded like the names of gods. The people once…
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A Forgotten Writer’s Paradise Of Prose and Poetry
From Man to Man By Moishe Nadir Translated by Harvey Fink Windshift Press, 130 pages, $16.95. Before we begin to speak of the revolutionary work of Yiddish American writer Moishe Nadir, we should first speak of the revolution in publishing technology and arts economics that has finally allowed a translated volume of his to be…
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A Mighty Pen and a Humble Heart
In 1997, Saul Friedländer, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, published the first half of his chef-d’oeuvre, “Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939.” Writing in The New York Times Book Review, historian Fritz Stern praised the book for being at once evocative and rigorous. “He writes history with…
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Dramatizing the History of Indian Jews
Dropped From Heaven By Sophie Judah Schocken Books, 243 pages, $23. Members of the Bene Israel, the ancient Indian Jewish community, claim they are the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, that they escaped persecution in the Galilee in the second-century BCE, and that their ancestors were shipwrecked on the southern coast of…
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At 96, A Writer Is Born
Dropped From Heaven By Sophie Judah Schocken Books, 243 pages, $23. Walls and barriers have made front-page news lately. There’s the concrete wall going up between Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the reinforced fence along the United States-Mexico border. These recent developments make Harry Bernstein’s memoir, “The Invisible Wall,” especially pertinent. Bernstein, now 96…
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Judaism’s Green Roots
An exciting Jewish environmental movement has been developing in recent years, with its foundations firmly established in tradition and modern environmental knowledge. The latest rung in this developing ladder is the publication of a new book by Jeremy Benstein, associate director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership. “A Way Into Judaism and…
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The Kitbag Question
Reporting on a visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to Sderot, the town near Gaza repeatedly hit by Qassam rockets, the Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz had this to say about her meeting there with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana: “In the course of a press conference…. Solana said that he understood the local…
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June 1, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward Socialist comrade Sol Fieldman was arrested this week on charges of disturbing the peace. He was brought before the magistrate, who ordered him held on $100 bail. Fieldman, who has relentlessly disrupted Socialist Party meetings with attempts to force his own political agenda on the party, refused to pay…
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Dr. Ruth’s Other Interest: Ethnography
Ruth Westheimer is best known as “Dr. Ruth,” the tiny Jewish woman who dispenses sex advice in a distinctive German accent. But the renowned psychosexual therapist also happens to be an accomplished amateur ethnographer, having studied groups ranging from the Ethiopian Jews to Trobriand Islanders, often with a particular focus on family dynamics. Her latest…
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