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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Mikveh Mysteries, Solved
Forward reader Gertrude Frankel writes: “I have been trying, since seeing the movie ‘Little Jerusalem’ (in which such a figure is a great help to a married woman whose husband has strayed), to find out what the name is for the female attendant in the mikvah. I have asked a rabbi, a Hebrew teacher, and…
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To Black and Back: Viewing the Work of Austrian Director Alex Corti at the New York Jewish Film Festival
A man awakes one morning to discover he has become an insect — hideous, despised and hunted. The world around him looks much the same as it ever has, but he can tell by the piteous looks of those around him that he himself has changed, and can never again be who he once was….
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The Wrong Heaven: Critic Joshua Cohen on His New Novel
For four years, literary critic Joshua Cohen has offered readers of these pages his unique perspective on literature — in reviews of both fiction and nonfiction, as well as his acclaimed question-and-answer sessions with such writers as George Konrad, Joseph Epstein and others. This week, as Joshua sets out on a tour for his own…
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Just Say ‘Nu?’: How Are You, cont’d.
The usual responses to general questions about your welfare are: nishKOOsheh Not bad E-E-H A less confident “not bad” FRAIG NISHT Don’t ask AF MEIneh SONim geZUGT It should happen to my enemies. E-e-h and nishkoosheh are two of many Yiddish words with a pronounced physical component. In order to use either of them effectively:…
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Balkan Beauty
People of the Book By Geraldine Brooks Viking, 372 pages, $25.95. In her new novel, “People of the Book,” Geraldine Brooks compresses six centuries of history and transforms them into a fast-moving mystery novel. Brooks’s engaging, intensely researched historic tale is based on the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a book that originated in pre-Inquisition…
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The 2007 National Jewish Book Awards
Below are the winners of the 2007 National Jewish Book Awards: Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award “How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now” By James L. Kugel Free Press The Jewish Book Council Lifetime Achievement Award Rabbi Harold S. Kushner American Jewish Studies (Celebrate 350 Award)…
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Tutors Tackle Tinseltown
When entertainment executive Marc Potash landed a job at Universal Pictures last spring, the offer didn’t come out of the blue. After all, Potash had an inside connection at Universal — not because of his background in film production, but because he had been the bar mitzvah coach of the studio co-chairman’s son. Potash, 28,…
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Holocaust Memorial Takes Flight
Hundreds of thousands of butterflies from around the world are flocking to the Holocaust Museum Houston as part of an educational program about the Holocaust. The museum’s Butterfly Project is attempting to collect 1.5 million handmade butterflies to represent the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust. So far, it has received more than…
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Conservative Schools Rethink Israel Studies
This month, a new middle-school curriculum focused on Israel will be launched as a pilot program in Conservative congregational schools. Israel Today is the final unit of Project Etgar, a curriculum currently being tried out in 25 supplementary schools affiliated with Conservative synagogues. “If you go to synagogue school, you come out thinking that Israel…
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Butterflies Teach a Colorful Lesson
Pavel Friedman’s enduring words inspired others to collect butterflies, as well. A few years ago, artist and activist Sue Klau visited New York’s Jewish Museum with her husband. She toured an exhibit of paintings from children in Theresienstadt and read Pavel’s poem “I Never Saw Another Butterfly.” She turned to her husband and said, “Let’s…
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Supplementary Schools Preserve Israeli Culture in America
When Raveetal Celine and her husband, Graham, moved to the Boston area from Israel in 1999, their young daughters settled nicely into their new life — a little too nicely, Celine felt. The girls’ Hebrew began slipping away, and their American friends were crowding out Israelis. Concerned that her daughters would lose their Israeli identity,…
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