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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Stating the Obvious
The story is told about Josef Stalin at the Yalta Conference that, bored by a discussion about the role of the Vatican in postwar Europe, he asked brusquely, “How many divisions has the pope?” He had a point: The pope had none. And yet, although diplomatic verbal disputes often seem academic, the diplomats continue to…
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November 9, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward A heartbreaking letter written by a boy in Antwerp was brought into the offices of the Forward. Apparently, the boy, an emigrant from Eastern Europe, was left alone in Antwerp. His parents are somewhere in New York, but as of yet they have not been found. In part, the…
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A New Ruin Rising
Can a ruin still be called a ruin once it has been rebuilt? This is the not-so-theoretical question that visitors to Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter may be asking after strolling by the construction site where the preserved remains of the Hurva (Ruin) synagogue used to stand. Late last year, the Israeli government began work on a…
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The Jewish Gypsy
He is a resident of Seville who has devoted his life to preserving Gypsy music and dance from southern Spain. He founded an ensemble for that purpose, whose Spanish title means “art and purity.” And his name is… Ethan Margolis. So what’s a nice Jewish boy from the Midwest doing running a traditional flamenco group,…
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Klimt’s Last Retrospective
Museum officials are calling the exhibition now on display at New York’s Neue Galerie America’s first-ever Gustav Klimt retrospective. But can the eight paintings and 120 drawings on view be considered a true “retrospective”? The exhibition is not drawn from a variety of sources; it is, rather, made up of a single — albeit impressive…
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Securing a Father’s Place In American Social History
Abraham Epstein: The Forgotten Father of Social Security By Pierre Epstein University of Missouri Press, 344 pages, $39.95. Throughout the 1930s, the home of Abraham and Henriette Epstein, at 389 Bleecker Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, was a salon where political reformers ate, drank and argued about how to provide social insurance for older Americans….
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Darfur Activist Takes a Turn on the Silver Screen
The first time that Adam Sterling was in charge of organizing anything was his freshman year of college, when he sent a busload of underage students down to Tijuana, where they could drink legally. The only investment decision he had made up to that point was whether to purchase an Xbox 360 or wait until…
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An Epistolary Glimpse Into Wartime Holland
How does one understand the incomprehensible human tragedy of the Holocaust? The answer: One story at a time. In “Hidden Letters” (Star Bright Books), Deborah Slier and Ian Shine have edited a treasure trove of letters that Philip “Flip” Slier, a Dutch Jew, wrote during 1942 at the Dutch forced labor camp Molengoot. The translations…
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Viral Philanthropy Starts To Spread
Hoping to raise money for a three-day bike ride over Labor Day to benefit the Jewish environmental organization Hazon, Ariela Pelaia turned to her blog. Pelaia, 26, thought she could find donors by raffling off books on her personal Web site, www.bakingandbooks.com, which draws up to 2,000 viewers each day. She was right: Pelaia received…
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Agencies Lobby To Make Tax Incentive Permanent
With one of the most significant tax incentives for charitable giving set to expire by the end of the year, philanthropies and foundations are pushing lawmakers to make the tax relief permanent, allowing senior citizens to continue to transfer to charitable causes, tax free, funds from their individual retirement accounts. The temporary measure, called the…
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New Fund Gives Young Jews a Place at the Table
When a group of 20-somethings formed a fund to give money to innovative Jewish not-for-profit groups, their project itself was, in an ironic twist, an innovation in Jewish philanthropy. It’s no secret that Jewish donor circles are, for the most part, dominated by wealthy individuals — predominantly men — who are well beyond the half-century…
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