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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March 24, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD The courtroom was packed with both supporters and detractors of the 17th Street “Jewish Mystic,” Julius Benjamin, who was on trial for practicing medicine without a license. While some people called him a charlatan, others said he performed miracles. Max Zaks testified that he was crippled in one leg…
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Curses Show Language’s Creativity
Lita Epstein does not have a dirty mouth. Her pen, however, is filthy. Epstein’s forthcoming book, “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Say It in Yiddish” (Citadel Press), offers page after page of Yiddish insults and curses, some of which would make even the bawdiest of sailors blush. The book, due in stores next month,…
The Latest
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Looking for Inspiration in All The Wrong Places
Memoirs of a Muse By Lara Vapnyar Pantheon, 224 pages, $22.95. * * *| Tanya, the heroine of Lara Vapnyar’s first novel, “Memoirs of a Muse,” and (as far as Tanya is concerned) of numerous masterpieces yet to be created, doesn’t claim to be an expert on literature, but when it comes to choosing among…
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Labor’s Loves Lost
Paul Buhle is a senior lecturer in history and American civilization at Brown University. A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists In New York By Tony Michels Harvard University Press, 352 pages, $27.95. * * *| The tale of Jewish socialists on Manhattan’s Lower East Side offers one of those urban legends, alive with so…
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The Moses Between Egypt and Mendelssohn
Maimonides Sherwin B. Nuland. Schocken, 256 pages, $19.95. * * *| Three Moseses have decisively shaped Jewish history. On one end is Moses the Egyptian, a lawgiver and political leader whose vision established the path for a monotheistic revolution, thus defining the spiritual boundaries of a people. On the opposite end is Moses Mendelssohn, whose…
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A New Name for an Old Crime
Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe By Benjamin Lieberman Ivan R. Dee, 416 pages, $27.50. * * *| While Serb paramilitaries were driving Muslims from their homes in Bosnia during the spring of 1992 in an effort to rid the region of its “Muslim fundamentalist” population, Serb radio stations proudly coined…
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Understanding the Philosopher of Auschwitz
Adorno By Stefan Müller-Doohm; translated by Rodney Livingstone Polity Press, 667 pages, $75. * * *| Adorno: A Political Biography By Lorenz Jäger; translated by Stewart Spencer Yale University Press. 248 pages. $35. * * *| Although Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the two most prominent German philosophers of the postwar period (the other…
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Tracing the History of Jewish Autobiography
Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography By Marcus Moseley Stanford University Press, 650 pages, $70. * * *| ‘This is the Life Story of Judah Aryeh…. Few and evil have been the days of my life in this world… on Monday the 28th day of Nissan — corresponding to the 23d day of…
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Reviving Jewish Ethics
A Code of Jewish Ethics: Volume 1: You Shall Be Holy By Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Harmony/Bell Tower, 576 pages, $29.95. * * *| The seven deadly sins, codified most likely in the 13th century, have enjoyed sustained notoriety, both ecclesiastical and in the public imagination. What is most noteworthy about these “capital sins,” as they…
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Across the Boundaries of Language
Call It English: The Languages of Jewish American Literature By Hana Wirth-Nesher Princeton University Press, 256 pages, $39.50. * * *| As we enter a world that will forever remain “multicultural,” the borders of our languages have become easier than ever to cross. Paradoxically, to understand all of what is said and what is written…
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The Poetry of Mature Experience
The Sights Along the Harbor: New and Collected Poems By Harvey Shapiro Wesleyan University Press, 288 pages, $29.95. * * *| In his mother’s recollection, Harvey Shapiro’s first words were in Yiddish. Born in 1924 to an observant Jewish family, he lived as a child first on the Lower East Side, then high enough up…
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