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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Reviving the Reputation of a Man of One Book
Postal Indiscretions: The Correspondence of Tadeusz Borowski Edited by Tadeusz Drewnowski, translated from the Polish by Alicia Nitecki Northwestern University Press, 384 pages, $35. Before the war destroyed a particular pretentiousness of European literature, there was a favored Latin phrase (some say taken from Augustine, others say from Aquinas) often used to describe a believer’s…
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New Manuscript, Same Conundrum
Fire in the Blood By Irène Némirovsky Translated from French by Sandra Smith Knopf, 129 pages, $22. Three years ago, a newly discovered manuscript became the talk of France. “Suite Française,” an uncompleted novel about the German invasion and occupation of France, attracted widespread interest in its author, Irène Némirovsky, who wrote in French and…
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Telling Slanted Truths
The Empress of Weehawken By Irene Dische Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pages, $24. Irene Dische, an American writer living in Berlin, is best known for short stories in which Germany figures as a wild territory, one where the memory roams like a ghost seeking scattered bits of its past. Many of her characters are…
The Latest
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Exit Zuck
Exit Ghost By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin, 304 pages, $26. Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy & Epilogue 1979–1985: “The Ghost Writer,” “Zuckerman Unbound,” “The Anatomy Lesson,” “The Prague Orgy,” and (previously unpublished) television screenplay for “The Prague Orgy” By Philip Roth Library of America, 645 pages, $35. Reading Philip Roth’s new novel, “Exit Ghost,” is like…
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October 19, 2007
100 Years Ago in the forward Joseph Steinberg, a Yiddish variety performer, lived happily with his wife in the couple’s South Brooklyn home. At least that’s what all the neighbors thought. As it turns out, Mrs. Steinberg isn’t Mrs. Steinberg at all; she is Mrs. Mandel. Although the couple lived as man and wife for…
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Yid Vid: Arlen Specter, Funnyman
The Chicago Tribune’s Josh Drobnyk has the story: Arlen Specter, the 77-year-old Pennsylvania senator and former Philadelphia district attorney, doesn’t exactly exude humor. But apparently he’s got a knack for stand-up comedy. The five-term senator won second place in the annual D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity contest last night, finishing behind an editor for the satirical newspaper…
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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…
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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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