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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Yeah, but the Book Is Better
Whenever a film is adapted from a favorite novel, serious readers of fiction are prone to say, “Yeah, but the book is better.” True partisans of the written page are always in conflict with those who like their stories cinematically revealed, projected onto wide screens that illuminate the darkness and pierce the quiet with Dolby…
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Trying To Make Sephardic Music as Hip as Klezmer
Benjamin Cardozo was one. So was Benjamin Disraeli. Some believe that FDR may have been one, at least on his mother’s side. Camille Pissarro, Harold Pinter, Murray Perahia… Sephardic Jews, every one. And yet, despite their notable achievements throughout the Diaspora, Sephardim have been noticeably absent from the North American Jewish music scene. (In Israel,…
The Latest
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My Little Sister’s Wedding
Why am I standing here at my little sister’s wedding, and glaring? Unlike you, Joseph’s brothers (and sister!) would have understood me. Go read Vayeshev, my favorite childhood Torah portion. I’m glaring because you stopped letting me crawl into bed with you after she was born, there not being enough room between you for two….
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December 23, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD A benefit was held this week at the Casino Theater to raise funds for the Jews of Russia, who have been brutally attacked, robbed and murdered. Among the major talents who participated in the benefit: famed actress Sarah Bernhardt, who showed up late and refused to sit in her…
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Israel’s Walter Cronkite Finds Himself at a Crossroads
Chaim Yavin, rightly referred to as Israel’s Walter Cronkite, has an odd face for a news anchor. Though his presence has comforted millions, delivering the news nightly on Israel’s state-run channel — with an almost exaggeratedly perfect diction — since 1968, his features seem to betray a slight befuddlement, a tinge of obliviousness. It’s not…
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Holy Feast, Holy Fast
Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah By Joel Hecker Wayne State University Press, 296 pages, $44.95. * * *| Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture By Eliezer Diamond Oxford University Press, 240 pages, $49.95. * * *| To put it mildly, Jews have a complicated relationship…
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Back December 16, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD It is being reported that well-known Russian antisemite Nikolski, who is advising the Russian imperialists on how to handle the current upheaval, said to the tsar, “The only way to stop the revolution is to drown it in a sea of Jewish blood.” Nikolski is known to have great…
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SPIELBERG’S PREDECESSORS
“Munich” is not the first film to take on the subject of anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish terrorism. Here’s a selection of notable past works on the subject: “VISIONS OF EIGHT” (1973) — The official film of the Munich Olympics, directed by a slew of international directors, including Milos Forman, Kon Ichikawa and Arthur Penn. Surprisingly, only…
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Close Encounters of the Middle East Kind
The most surprising thing about Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” a conversation piece long before it even got out of production, is the limpness with which it lands. There’s something trumped-up about the whole enterprise that actually renders it less substantial — scenes milking the extra second before an explosion, assassins debating ethics with improbable gravitas and,…
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Narrative History in the Grand Tradition
A History of the Jews in the Modern World By Howard M. Sachar Knopf, 848 pages, $40. * * *| Narrative history is all about plot. At its best, it marshals its facts and then marches them out to tell orderly tales. It cannot really concern itself with complicated social structures because its linear organization…
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A Jewish Boy With a Memphis Tale Visits a New York Stage
If you believe that stories are the sinews binding us to one another, creating whatever remnants of communion we have, then you might want to walk the well-worn path to 42nd Street and take in Jonathan Adam Ross’s one-man show, “Walking in Memphis: The Life of a Southern Jew.” It’s a celebration of storytelling, as…
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Fast Forward South Africa’s chief rabbi supports Donald Trump — but says his refugee program for Afrikaners is a ‘mistake’
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