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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Looking Back February 24, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD The Hasidic Rebbe of Kopists, near the city of Mohilev, is known throughout the region for his wise ways — and not only among Jews. It is well known that nearby nobles as well as peasants often seek out the rebbe for his sage advice. Therefore, local gendarmes and…
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‘The Accidental Empire’
‘We are divided,” Haim Gouri’s mother had taught him, “between those with meager spirits and those with torn souls.” That night, more than ever, Gouri counted himself as one of the raggedly ripped souls, and he envied the other sort. A solitary Israeli army jeep growled north from Jerusalem on the road winding through the…
The Latest
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The Art of Disaster
The Art of Disaster The Catastrophist By Lawrence Douglas * * *| Other Press, 276 pages, $24.95.When we first meet Daniel Wellington, the protagonist of Lawrence Douglas’s debut novel, he is lying awake, waiting for the 3:30 a.m. passage of Amtrak’s Montreal to Washington express. He gets out of bed, witnesses the diesel engine as…
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Classical Training A Conversation With Allan Greenberg
Next month, Allan Greenberg will be the first American to receive classical architecture’s highest honor, The Richard H. Driehaus Prize, awarded by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. For Greenberg, the prize is not only a recognition of his success as an architect, but also a validation of his great claim that in…
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From a Popular Composer, More Than Meets the Ear
If you had to choose a single word to describe the contemporary Jewish music scene, “eclectic” would be a good one. The klezmer revival of the 1970s begat klezmer-jazz, which in turn begat klezmer-funk, klezmer-punk and scores of other klezmer-hyphenates, all of which now coexist happily with Sephardic pop, Mizrahic hip hop, and innumerable other…
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Fame’s Good Fortune
Recently I came across an article in a Hebrew newspaper that bore the caption “Children of Celebrities Are Fed Up With Strange Names Given Them by Their Parents.” The article began with the complaint of Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof, the 16-year-old daughter of singer Bob Geldof, that she would have preferred something…
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The Choice of Staying In Or Getting Out
Exodus 21:2-6 (and, with small variants, Deuteronomy 15:12-18) prescribes that a Hebrew slave, after six years’ servitude, must be offered the opportunity to regain freedom, and the consequences if he chooses to stay in servitude: If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he be married then his wife shall…
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February 17
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD New York City’s Grand Street Post office has been besieged by Jews asking about the money orders they’ve sent to their relatives in Russia who are currently suffering a wave of pogroms. Dozens of Jews came to the Forward’s offices this week complaining that the money they’ve sent to…
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For This Mother and Daughter, The Family Business Is Culture
Blood might be thicker than water, as the adage goes, but paint is thicker than both. Immigrant artist Miriam Laufer, who died in 1980, was the mother of Manhattan Upper West Sider Susan Bee, and matriarch to one of the most experimental and intense artistic dynasties of Jewish New York. Besides the mother and daughter,…
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Suffering the Peculiar Fate of Being a Poet’s Poet
The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918-1975 Edited by Seamus Cooney David R. Godine, 400 pages. $21.95. * * *| Charles Reznikoff, who was born to Russian parents in Brooklyn in 1894 and lived the bulk of his life in Manhattan, suffered the peculiar fate of being a poet’s poet: He was well respected and little…
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Tracking Change, and the Lack of It, In New York’s Garment Industry
A Coat of Many Colors: Immigration, Globalization, and Reform In New York City’s Garment Industry Edited by Daniel Soyer Fordham University Press, 312 pages, $75. * * *| ‘What’s the difference between a Jewish clothing worker and a Jewish psychiatrist?” an old joke goes. Answer: “One generation.” Actually it was more like two or even…
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