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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February 15, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Jacob Lustig, a skinny Russian Jew who operates a small fish store, was robbed of $1,026 in a very unusual way. Apparently, a landsman came to him and told him he had $100 and wanted to do some business. Lustig told him that if he gave him the $100,…
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History Books: One Dealer’s Extraordinary Collection of Judaica
Walking amid the medieval suits of armor, vintage Cartier jewelry, and luxurious European and American furnishings at the 54th Winter Antiques Show in New York last month, visitors could easily spot Bauman Rare Books, the only exhibitor specializing in antiquarian and modern collectible books. In Bauman’s 18th appearance at this prestigious fair, an elegant customized…
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Rage Against the (Sewing) Machine
Representing the Immigrant Experience: Morris Rosenfeld and the Emergence of Yiddish Literature in America By Marc Miller Syracuse University Press, 224 pages, $29.95. Yiddish today, like a century ago, is a sharply divided language. On one hand, it is still the language spoken in countless ultra-Orthodox homes in Brooklyn, Israel and Europe, and on the…
The Latest
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Remembering Bobby Fischer
Unquestionably the most famous chess player in the history of the royal game, Bobby Fischer died last month at the age of 64 — the exact number of squares on the chessboard. His lively games will be remembered for as long as the game is played. “Chess is life,” Fischer used to say. But, alas,…
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Tracking Kasztner’s Train
Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust By Anna Porter Walker & Company, 464 pages, $27.95. Why are thousands of non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust memorialized in Yad Vashem, while the one Jew who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews is virtually forgotten? This is the moral injustice that…
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Yelling Melodiously
It is no easy feat to yell melodiously, but the Jewish rock quartet The Shondes has achieved just that. The screams on their new album, “The Red Sea,” sound ancient and somewhat cantorial, piping in from the Old Testament to talk to us about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, misogyny, Bible tales and intimacy. Sonically, the music…
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‘Arab Jew,’ Part II
I have received two long letters arguing with my column of two weeks ago, in which I objected to the term “Arab Jew.” Here are parts of them. From Jack Warga of Boynton Beach, Fla.: My family lived for at least 150, and probably several hundred, years in Poland. I spoke Polish and attended a…
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Clash and Learn
Tova Hartman, co-founder of the “halakhic, egalitarian” Jerusalem synagogue Shira Hadasha, is a familiar voice to many readers of these pages. She has been active in various organizations, including the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, where she is an outspoken critic of what she refers to as the “hijacking” of the discourse around feminism in the…
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February 8, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward Esther Shpiz, a 60-year-old resident of Hester Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was on her way to visit her friend, Becky Shupinski, who lives nearby in an Orchard Street tenement. After trudging up to Shupinski’s fifth-floor apartment, Esther walked over to the hallway window to get a breath…
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Film & TV Neurotics of the World Unite!: Larry David To Star in Woody Allen’s Next Film
Entertainment Weekly reports: Larry David, the mind behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is set to be the lead in Woody Allen’s next, as-yet-untitled feature, which is scheduled to shoot in New York City in the spring. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but David will act alongside Evan Rachel Wood. E.W. notes that…
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Extraordinary Nostalgia
Joachim Prinz, Rebellious Rabbi: An Autobiography – the German and Early American Years By Joachim Prinz Edited and introduced by Michael A. Meyer Indiana University Press, 270 pages, $34.95 When it comes to portraying rabbinical figures, Philip Roth has not been the kindest writer around. Yet in his 2004 novel, “The Plot Against America,” a…
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