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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Magen David: Shield or Star?
Chalk up a victory for the Star of David — or, as it is called in Hebrew, the magen David or “Shield of David.” Long boycotted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which refused to grant Israel’s “Red Shield of David” organization membership in its ranks because it did not recognize the medical…
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Korah; or, the Possibility of Change
This week’s Torah portion, Korah, tells a spectacular story of rebellion and punishment. Korah challenges Moses and Aaron’s rule with a deceptively simple argument: “All of the community is holy.… What makes you so special that you raise yourselves up?” (Numbers 16:3) Coming as it does from his very own tribe, Moses falls into despair….
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Ethical Designs
You don’t need to be enrolled in art school to know that the philosophies of green design and smart design are becoming, in many circles, the only acceptable way to build anything from an apartment building to a pair of shoes. With social and environmental responsibility at the forefront of the minds of most contemporary…
The Latest
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Metropolitan New York
Exhibits Resistance: The courageous stories of 27 men and women who, some 60 years ago, resisted Nazi occupation in Belgium are included in a documentary exhibition, Images of Resistance: Belgium, 1940-1945. The display features large-scale digital photographs, wartime images, contemporary portraits and personal testimonies of the resisters. Presented by Yeshiva University Museum, the exhibit is…
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Klezmer in the East Looks to the West for Guidance
Midway through its hauntingly minimalist performance on the opening night of Moscow’s second-annual klezmer festival, the vocal quartet Ashkenazim took a dramatically long pause to introduce the song “Dem Shokhens Meydl.” The group’s tenor, Alina Ivakh, explained that song is an allegorical tale of two young pioneer girls — the Soviet version of Girl Scouts…
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Jewish Mobsters Amble From Text to the Panel
With 8 million stories in the Jewish naked city, artists Joe Kubert, Neil Kleid and Jake Allen have given us two riveting ones. With the growing interest in graphic novels and the pictorial evocation of historical events, it’s not surprising that more and more Jewish tales are ending up in panels instead of in type….
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Immersion in Reality
The mikveh attendant in a town where I often visit but do not live was always the same: towheaded, horsy wig, vast muumuu, thick accent and brusque, brusque, brusque. Her job was to assist women preparing for ritual immersion in observance of the ambitiously named Laws of Family Purity. Assistance is necessary because these laws,…
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Reconnoitering Translations
In the view of many biblical scholars, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, the fact-finding expedition narrated in Numbers 13-14 is a composite account from several sources. In the first, Caleb is among the scouts sent by Moses to the Promised Land, but only as far north as Hebron; Caleb alone remains loyal to God when his…
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Celebration Of The Arts
A 1925 silent movie about boxing, a pop-musical tragicomedy focused on obsessive behavior and a play that examines the life of a glamorous Hollywood actress may not seem like three things that have much in common, but they are all part of the National Yiddish Book Center’s second annual Paper Bridge Summer Arts Festival. The…
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June 23
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD As the city of Bialystok burns in a massive pogrom, its Jews have begun fighting back heroically. From the rooftops and from windows, Jews have begun to shoot back with rifles and handguns. As to who gave the call to attack the Jews, all fingers point to the government…
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Love and Hate In Wartime Italy
The Water Door By Rosetta Loy Translated by Gregory Conti Other Press, 120 pages, $11.95. * * *| The 5-year-old narrator of Rosetta Loy’s brief, death-haunted novel “The Water Door” is, to borrow Henry James’s graceful phrase, a girl upon whom nothing is lost. To read this book is to become immersed in the intensity…
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