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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Rediscovering Isaac Rosenfeld
This week’s 50th yahrzeit of Isaac Rosenfeld, a brilliant and unjustly forgotten writer who belonged to a brilliant moment in American Jewish writing, offers a good occasion to measure the distance between that moment and our own. Rosenfeld’s story is a strange amalgam of success and failure. Born in Chicago, Rosenfeld was a prodigy, at…
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Filling in the Holes
Bagel boys, get ready for your close-up. Writer Matthew Goodman and veteran film director Joan Micklin Silver have begun collaborating on a documentary about the little-known history of the Local 338, the International Bagel Bakers Union of New York. The union, which was founded in 1907 and was one of the city’s most powerful in…
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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…
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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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Fast Forward Trump is keeping the world guessing about his Iran intentions. Could his first term offer clues?
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Fast Forward In tearful address, Mamdani laments criticism following his ‘globalize the intifada’ comments
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