This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Celebrating Steve Reich
Few composers in history have had the broad and diverse influence on music enjoyed by Steve Reich, whose 70th birthday this month is being celebrated literally around the globe. In his birthplace, New York City, for example, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Brooklyn Academy of Music are collaborating to present a month of performances. Such…
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October 13, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward During the last few weeks in one Williamsburg, Brooklyn, neighborhood, 24 houses have been broken into and numerous people have been robbed on the street. The police, therefore, were eager to catch those responsible. When they caught the culprit, it turned out to be a 16-year-old boy by the…
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‘Stardust Lost’
On a pleasant June evening that year, Manhattan’s original odd couple strolled down Second Avenue. The tall man with black beard and dark, deep-set eyes was Jacob Gordin, now a dominant presence on the Lower East Side. With loud voice and spirited gestures, the Russian immigrant went on about his adaptations of Shakespeare and his…
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Stage Killing
A little more than a century ago, New York’s Yiddish-speaking world was rocked by an attempted murder-suicide involving a member of one of the leading theatrical families of the day. Some 102 years later, I came across an elliptical mention of the incident but could find no more information about it in English. To figure…
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End of an Era
Who owns history? That question has proved to be a thorny one regarding the treasure trove of archives that once lived in New York City at 31 East 7th Street. The contents of that building are the remnants of the now-defunct Hebrew Actors Union, and, with the union officially disbanded, issues of ownership of the…
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Between Yiddishland and Broadway
Not long ago, I went to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center to examine some old Yiddish theater photographs. Historic photos must be viewed in the inner sanctum of the library — a separate space where you can’t bring in personal paraphernalia, can’t use pens, can’t even whisper. When…
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A Marquee for the Ages: The First Season of Maurice Schwartz’s Theater
The first season (August 1918 – May 1919) of Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theater opened at the 900-seat Irving Place Theatre, built as a German theater, in New York City’s Union Square. Schwartz’s repertory company lasted more than 30 seasons. The original cast of 15 principals (plus often dozens of extras) included Schwartz, Celia Adler,…
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The Irish and the Yiddish Theaters
How does an Irish Catholic become a translator of Yiddish drama? It’s a question I am asked, over and over. The short answer is that I came to study Yiddish literature, and later Yiddish theater, through my love of the Anglo-Irish and Gaelic literary traditions. The longer answer requires a bit of history. The Irish…
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Beyond ‘The Dybbuk’
Although recent years have seen published translations of Yiddish plays into Russian, German and Hebrew, the English language seems only to see reincarnations of “The Dybbuk.” In this respect, “Landmark Yiddish Plays: A Critical Anthology” (State University of New York Press), compiled by Jeremy Dauber and Joel Berkowitz, is itself a landmark. It brings to…
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Springtime for Spinoza
In April 1655, the year before Amsterdam’s Jewish community excommunicated him, Baruch Spinoza was the victim of a failed assassination. According to French encyclopedist Pierre Bayle, Spinoza was attacked “on leaving the theatre by a Jew who attacked him with a knife. The wound was slight, but Spinoza believed that it was the assassin’s intention…
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The Yiddish Play That Bewitched Israeli Theater-goers
More than the artistic peak of “The Dybbuk” or the moving tragicomedy of “Tevye the Dairyman,” another play from Yiddish theater repertoire has never failed to enchant theatergoers in Israel in the past 70 years. Surprisingly, the spell was cast by a piece that could easily be considered shund (trash) — naive, primitive, old fashioned,…
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