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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One of Most Relevant Thinkers You’ve Never Heard Of
The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions By Christian Wiese Brandeis University Press, 292 pages, $50. Like most things German, the philosophy of Hans Jonas is complicated. But its main thrust can be summed up by its leading moral imperative: “Act so that the effects of your action do not destroy the future…
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Great Day on Eldridge Street
Scores of klezmer musicians descended on the Lower East Side last Friday to be photographed on the steps of the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Organized by musician Yale Strom, the “Great Day on Eldridge Street” photo shoot was timed to coincide with the shul’s 120th anniversary. Award-winning radio reporter and Forward contributor Jon Kalish filed a…
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As the Carousel Turns
Within the folk art field and even among Judaica scholars, Jewish folk art has been given short shrift — relegated, sadly, to religious artifact. Unlike Shaker or Mennonite contributions to the field, “the word ‘Jewish’ never entered the vocabulary,” said Murray Zimiles, an artist and a State University of New York professor. Zimiles labored 12…
The Latest
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The Anti-‘Fiddler’
It presents nine actors playing dozens of roles, including a stone gargoyle and a deceased bride. It has an onstage band featuring accordion and tuba, costumes by fashion designer and recovering Lubavitch Levi Okunov, and spooky animation by artists Tine Kindermann and Mor Erlich. And that’s just the beginning. The latest adaptation of I.L. Peretz’s…
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A Photographer’s Family Album, and Ours
For most of us, family albums are packed tight with shots of smiling relatives lined up at life-cycle events: the bris, the bar mitzvah, the wedding. Such pictures do not interest Israeli photographer Vardi Kahana, who has taken the concept of the family album and exploded it with One Family, an exhibit currently on view…
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Memo to Michael Steinhardt: ‘Duh.’
This past summer, philanthropist Michael Steinhardt rocked the Jewish institutional world when he announced that he sort of regretted the $125 million he had spent on Jewish causes. “Is the Jewish world any better today than it was 13 years ago? Have things really improved? Are we reaching more people?” Steinhardt asked. “I don’t have…
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Swedish Wish
Reader Debbie Rabina writes: “We have just returned from a family vacation in Sweden, where we spent some enjoyable time in the old city of Stockholm — Gamla Stan. The name immediately brings to mind the site of Gamla on the Golan Heights, and I am curious as to a possible connection between these two…
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October 12, 2007
100 Years Ago in the forward A New York City tenement house on Orchard Street has been in an uproar ever since the building’s housekeeper had one of its more upstanding, but financially unfortunate, tenants, the melamed Nokhem Strauss, evicted. Poor Strauss and his family were forced out onto the street after having had an…
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Music Matisyahu Bids Chabad Adieu
The JTA reports: Orthodox Jewish reggae sensation Matisyahu is leaving the Chabad movement. “I am no longer identified with Chabad,” the American singer told Ha’aretz this week during a private visit to Israel. “Today it’s more important to me to connect to a universal message.” Born Matthew Miller, Matisyahu embraced Orthodox Judaism while studying in…
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Just Say ‘Nu’
Picture me ten years ago, desperate and broke. I’m in an editing suite, watching porn with a producer. “So you see what’s happening here?” he asks. “She’s switched rooms with the rabbi’s wife, but the desk clerk forgot to tell the rabbi. When he comes back at night, he goes straight to the room and…
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Will Eisner’s Life, Drawn by His Own Hand
Life, in Pictures: Autobiographical Stories By Will Eisner, with an introduction by Scott McCloud W.W. Norton & Company, 496 pages, $29.95. In one of many ironies whose origins may be suggested here, artist-entrepreneur Will Eisner died in 2005, just as his collected oeuvre had begun to persuade readers that he was a true master and…
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