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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Film & TV
‘Tribe’ Tops iTunes
Just months after winning awards and garnering critical acclaim at film festivals, “The Tribe,” a documentary on what it means to be Jewish in the 21st-century has moved to #1 on the iTunes top-selling short films list. The 18-minute film chronicles the modern Jewish American experience through archival footage, graphics and animation and is downloadable…
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October 26, 2007
100 Years Ago in the forward The parents of 17-year-old Ida Milner were worried sick after their daughter disappeared from their home in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn more than six weeks ago. They reported the missing girl to the police and mentioned the name Abraham Krimko as her current boyfriend, but nothing turned up….
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The Anti-Chagall
They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust By Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett University of California Press, 412 pages, $39.95. Mayer Kirshenblatt was born in 1916 in the Polish town of Apt. In 1934, when he was 17, Mayer, his mother and his three siblings immigrated…
The Latest
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Scrapbook Inquiry
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice By Janet Malcolm Yale University Press, 240 pages, $25. Given her belief in the instability of knowledge, Janet Malcolm is, on principle, always at a loss for clear answers. Instead, she has mastered the finely honed question. In “The Silent Woman,” what interested Malcolm — and the happily implicated reader…
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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…
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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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