Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Which Jewish State?
Converging Alternatives: The Bund and the Zionist Labor Movement, 1897-1985 By Yosef Gorny State University of New York Press, 309 pages, $75. If the second intifada has achieved little else, it has reawakened furious disputes over questions seemingly settled long ago. Are Jews a nation? Are they entitled to political self-determination? Does the State of…
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Turning Down the Light
When Moses is clearly told that he will not enter the Promised Land because of a momentary failure in his ministry of national leadership and service, we might wonder whether Moses is, in the end, a tragic figure. After all, he has labored to bring the people of Israel to the land in which the…
The Latest
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The Ghosts of Alfred Dreyfus
On July 12, France will celebrate the centennial of the acquittal of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer whose false indictment on a charge of treason set off a political scandal in the country. In a certain light, it would seem that the Dreyfus Affair — and the environment in which it emerged — has…
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A Different Kind Of Jewish Mother
A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous And Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted To Be a Respectable Jewish Mom), by Her Bastard Son By Clancy Sigal Carroll & Graf, 288 pages, $26. * * *| I n the past few years, there has been an impressive list of memoirs that triumphantly…
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The Rock as a Hard Place
I have always found the story of Moses in the Desert of Zin where there is no water and the well has gone dry (Numbers 20:1-12) to be knotty indeed, and the more one struggles with it, the tighter and the more uncomfortable are its bonds. We all know that Moses was supposed to talk…
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HEARTFELT DRAMA
Divorce is never a simple affair, but it’s certainly made easier when the couple is childless. The exes go their separate ways and, hopefully, find happiness and new love. However, the intriguing premise of “Hard Love,” by acclaimed Israeli playwright Motti Lerner, complicates the issue. Hannah and Hershel, two young ultra-Orthodox newlyweds, are forced into…
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MUSICAL NOSTALGIA
Set in the United States in the early 20th century, Stephen Flaherty’s 1998 Tony Award-winning musical, “Ragtime,” interweaves stories of a wealthy Protestant family; a poor Jewish immigrant and his daughter, and an educated black musician from Harlem, the woman he loves and their child. Based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel of the same name, the…
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METROPOLITAN NEW YORK
Exhibit ‘Layers of Time’: Artist Marty Greenbaum’s series of colorful mixed media, titled Recent Work: Layers of Time, is presented in a group exhibition at the Safe-T-Gallery in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. Greenbaum’s work appears with pieces by artists Daniel Blochwitz, Susan Bowen, Roger Bruhn and Burst387. Safe-T-Gallery, 11 Front St., Ste 214, Brooklyn; through July…
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YIDDISH IN THE PARK
Some people run away to the Hamptons or to the Jersey shore to escape the hazy, hot, humid summers typical of New York City. But those of us who stick around these concrete islands enjoy a number of seasonal benefits, not the least of which are the free outdoor concerts that dot the city’s public…
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The Least-known Modern Artist
Reading Charlotte Salomon Edited by Michael P. Steinberg and Monica Bohm-Duchen Cornell University Press, 233 pages, $39.95. Charlotte Salomon: Life? Or Theater? The New Museum, Yad Vashem, June 16-October 1. * * *| Charlotte Salomon, who was murdered by the SS in 1943, is perhaps the most moving of modern artists. She is also one…
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My Friends and Me
Friendship: An Exposé By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin, 288 pages, $24. ‘What really knocks me out,” Holden Caulfield says in “The Catcher in the Rye,” “is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on…
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