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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In Thailand, an Unusual Exhibit
The recent history of photographer Yishay Garbasz’s family is a story of migration, elected and forced. Garbasz’s mother, Sala, was born in Berlin. She took refuge from the Nazis in Holland, was deported to concentration camps in Czechoslovakia and in Poland, and finally made her way to Palestine. His father, Jack, was sent to Australia…
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Uh, What’s a Schwa?
In a discussion several days ago of the deletion in spoken American English of the word “of” in the expression “a couple of,” so that “a couple of friends” becomes “a couple friends,” New York Times language columnist William Safire wrote: “The couple of… merges into couple a (which I would spell coupluh). As I…
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Film & TV Sneak Peek: The Bielski Brothers on the Silver Screen
Have a look here at the trailer for “Defiance,” Ed Zwick’s take on the story of the Bielski brothers, who organized what is widely considered to have been the largest group of Jewish partisans during World War II. The movie stars Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, among others, and is set for release in late…
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Brandeis Professor Explores ‘Sex and the Shtetl’
The timing could not have been better. When ChaeRan Freeze completed her coursework toward a doctorate in Russian Jewish history in 1993, it was just as the doors to the archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg were beginning to swing open. As a result, she was among the first to request long-untouched troves of material…
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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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