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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Challenging Community’s Traditional Boundaries
A new documentary about a Philadelphia boy with Down syndrome preparing for his bar mitzvah is at turns inspiring, heartbreaking and likely to spark some soul-searching in the Jewish community about the inclusion of disabled people in religious life. “Praying With Lior,” which opens at Cinema Village in New York on February 1, received a…
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Rejecting the ‘Arab Jew’
‘A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories,” a Reuters dispatch reported last week, citing an interview with former Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal. In the course of this interview,…
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The Day of the Shah’s Flight
Twenty-nine years ago, on February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini landed in Tehran after a 25-year exile. Ten days later, he dissolved the monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran, nearly four weeks after the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, sick with lymphoma and unable to control his kingdom, had fled the country. For months…
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Music Whoever Said That Rappers and Orthodox Jews Don’t Mix?
Okay, I’m not sure anyone’s actually said that — and now nobody’s going to be able to say it, because we have ironclad evidence to the contrary. TMZ.com reports that the rapper Pharrell — who collaborated with Snoop Dogg on the hit single “Drop It Like It’s Hot” — “was driving around Miami when he…
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January 25, 2008
100 Years Ago in the Forward Mamie Marcus has had a terrible life. She was born into an impoverished family in Boston 15 years ago, and her mother committed suicide when she was a baby. Marcus’s grandfather took her to Russia, where she lived a few good years until her grandfather, a widower, married a…
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Film & TV But Will They Split the Jewish Vote?
The Academy Awards have been announced and two films with Jewish content received nods in the foreign-language category: “Beaufort” http://www.kino.com/beaufort/], a film about Israeli soldiers in Southern Lebanon by Israeli director Joseph Cedar, and the upcoming release “The Counterfeiters” based on the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, known as “Hitler’s Jewish counterfeiter.” We previewed the…
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Righteous Indignation: How Are We To Understand the Alleged Spinka Scandal?
The Hasidic Rebbe, or “Grand Rabbi,” is no ordinary Jewish spiritual leader. Unlike rabbis in other denominations, from Reform to the fervently Orthodox, the Rebbe in Hasidic communities is much more than a teacher, adjudicator of Jewish law and community leader. He is nothing less than a conduit between his followers and the Heavens; a…
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People Of the Chapbook: Jewish Poets as Jewish Teachers
Not many people know it, but Jewish poetry is alive and well. The neglect is surprising, really, since we are, after all, the People of the Book, and we allegedly cherish our poets, from the ancients to Amichai. But perhaps it’s not so surprising, given our contemporary culture, which (poets laureate notwithstanding) relegates poetry to…
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A History of Us: ‘The Jewish Americans’ Hits the High Notes
The Jewish Americans PBS, January 9, 16, 23 The Jewish Americans By Beth S. Wenger Doubleday, 388 pages,$40. About halfway through the first installment of David Grubin’s three-part documentary “The Jewish Americans,” a voice-over reads an 1862 letter from a northern Jewish officer, one Marcus Spiegel. In it, Spiegel explains to his wife why it…
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The Return of Eduard and Fanni
Much has been written about efforts to reclaim art looted from Jewish families during the Holocaust. Many of these stories involve valuable works by such well-known artists as Gustav Klimt, Camille Pissarro and Egon Schiele. But this is a Holocaust art story of a different stripe. The paintings in question have little commercial value, but…
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Amen
My daughter will not go to sleep without “amen.” It has become a habit. She says the word if I forget. We say together the shema, And amin m’amin. Sometimes we say it to the dog. Sometimes we say it to the bear, Or to the Eeyore toy — her favorite character, Which worries me….
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