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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Books
The American Jewish Inexperience?
Sholom Aleichem, Bintel Blog readers. (Your turn: Aleichem, Sholom). I’m currently on tour promoting “A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward”, so my posting will be spotty for a little while. But here’s something that could keep you busy for some time. In the latest issue of The Nation,…
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Remembering ‘Hair’ and The Tangle of the 1960s
Although no one celebrates it, a historic date in the American calendar was marked two weeks ago. On April 29, 1968, the musical that encapsulated the mood and spirit of the 1960s opened on Broadway. “Hair” both shocked and titillated its audiences with its in-your-face rejection of the values of the older generation, encouraging young…
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Judaism and the Culture of Outburst
It feels like we’re “Falling Down” again. Fourteen years ago, Michael Douglas’s badly coiffed Everyman captured a cultural moment of impotent white rage: Furious at downsizing, outsourcing and the increasing falseness of American life, but powerless to stop any of it, Douglas’s character finally snaps — and we watched, mostly sympathetically. That year, 1993, came…
The Latest
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May 11, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward While there are many printed images of early Jewish heroes, like Rashi and Rambam, these drawings are generally not regarded as accurate portrayals. Although his history is mired in scandal and is discussed infrequently today, amazing 17th-century “messiah” Shabtai Tsvi counted most of the world’s Jews as his followers…
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An Oracle of Humanism’s Survival
If the number, variety and talent of a country’s writers should be apportioned to that country’s population or size, then small Hungary is operating at an incredible surplus. But if the number, variety and talent of a country’s writers should be apportioned, instead, to the trauma suffered by that country — adjusted to the number…
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A Series Defies Easy Answers to Inquisition’s Questions
When Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger was elected Pope on April 19, 2005, becoming Benedict XVI, his promotion elevated him from his position as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Critics of the archconservative, and highly controversial, cardinal were quick to point out that, since the CDF is the modern moniker for…
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Israeli Artists Zoom In on Commercial Success
With three major photography exhibits currently on view in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, an upcoming one-man show slated for Israeli marvel Barry Frydlender at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art this month and a major survey of Israeli photographers currently at New York’s Jewish Museum, Israeli video and photo artists are on display…
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May 4, 2007
100 Years Ago int the forward New York City License Commissioner John Bogart is warning Lower East Siders to be on the lookout for a scam artist known to the police as “Davidovich.” The scammer has been placing advertisements in Yiddish papers, offering a percentage of his successful employment agency. He brings potential investors to…
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After a 150-Year Intermission, Biblical-Themed Opera Reappears in Russia
The birth of Giuseppe Verdi’s third opera, “Nabucco,” came about almost by accident. In 1841, the 28-year-old Verdi, paralyzed by depression following the death of his wife and children, and the failure of his second opera, vowed never to compose again. Receiving a libretto from Bartolomeo Merelli, the impresario of Milan’s La Scala Theater, Verdi…
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Breaking The Silence Of Sefirah –– Sort of
The hip-hop artist Kosha Dillz recently scheduled a stop on his Midwest tour at Mike’s Place, a monthly party in Chicago. It seemed like a great match: Mike’s Place — which caters to young, single Jews in their 20s and 30s — is held at a club in Lakeview, an up-and-coming Modern Orthodox community that…
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An Offering To the Priests Of Yiddish
The Cross and Other Jewish Stories Lamed Shapiro Yale University Press, 226 pages, $30. At the end of “White Challah,” one of 16 stories included in Lamed Shapiro’s posthumous and definitive “The Cross, and Other Jewish Stories,” the aftermath of a pogrom is described in the following manner: “Pillars of smoke and pillars of flame…
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