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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New York Theater Teems With Jewish Fare
Looking to see a show that has a Jewish slant? Well, here’s some good news. Four off-Broadway comedies have taken the guesswork out of the selection process for you. “My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy,” “25 Questions for a Jewish Mother,” “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn” and “Jewtopia” all wisely advertise…
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November 17, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward There are currently 632 kosher restaurants in New York’s downtown area alone. Among the cheapest, one can find a dinner in the range of 2 cents to 5 cents, or you can find a kosher place that will charge upwards of 40 cents for a meal. Without exception, none…
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Purim Gets a Spinal Tap
The 2007 Academy Awards are scheduled for February 25, exactly one week before Purim. Coincidence? Maybe not. If Christopher Guest’s new film, “For Your Consideration,” is any indication, Purim might be Oscar’s new favorite holiday. In “For Your Consideration,” a group of actors — earnest, skilled and well intentioned, but definitely B-list material — are…
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Arrested Development?
Philip Roth’s Rude Truth: the Art of Immaturity By Ross Posnock Princeton University Press, 328 pages, $29.95. For Americans of a certain age, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was formative: It’s by now axiomatic that most will never forget where they were at the time they received word of the shooting. Similarly, though…
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The Big Chill
Last month, in an unusual show of unity around “the fundamental principle of debate in a democracy,” some 113 scholars and intellectuals with a wide range of passionate opinions about the Middle East signed a letter to the New York Review of Books in objection to the abrupt cancellation of a planned October 3 talk…
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The Reel Deal
Annette Insdorf can hardly believe it has been 20 years since she launched her popular cinematic interview series, “Reel Pieces,” and so she is consequently in the mood to reminisce. For the Columbia University professor who is also a film scholar and a master interviewer, the occasion of her series’ anniversary offers the opportunity to…
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Closing Time In Queens
‘What a drag it is getting old,” I hear Mick Jagger croon distantly in the back of my head as I exit the R train at 67th Avenue in Forest Hills, Queens. Stepping out of the dank subway air, I look across Queens Boulevard and wonder whether I will ever return to this block again…
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Defining the ‘WikiJew’
Who is a Jew? Let’s see what Wikipedia says about it. Or, rather, what the Wikipedias say, since the online encyclopedia is available in more than 100 languages. The answer to our question in English neither offends nor omits anyone: “[A] follower of Judaism, or [a member] of the Jewish people, an ethno-religious group descended…
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The Iconic Blue Box Gets a Makeover
When Yael Golan’s mother was a girl in Uruguay, she’d drop a few coins into the Keren Kayemet box every Friday at her Jewish day school and sing a little song: “Dunam by dunam, shekel by shekel, building the land of Israel.” Recently, 35 years after immigrating to Israel, Golan’s mother sang that song again,…
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November 10, 2006
100 Years Ago in the forward This past Tuesday night, the largest crowd in the city planted itself in front of the Forward building to hear the election results as they came in. Estimated at 20,000 people, the crowd packed Seward Park and the streets surrounding the area. At about 9 p.m., as the people…
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Nonprofits Mull Staff Shortages
After years of working with some of the most promising organizations in the rapidly expanding field of Jewish nonprofits, the staff at one of America’s largest Jewish family foundations noticed a disturbing trend: While dynamic and creative groups were cropping up everywhere, injecting Jewish communal life with renewed passion and commitment, the people needed to…
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