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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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,…
The Latest
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October 6, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward Zipping down Manhattan’s Delancey Street from the Williamsburg Bridge, streetcar driver James Riordan saw that something was not right with Leo Schwartz, the apprentice motorman he was instructing. First, Schwartz forgot to stop the car at Broadway, even though passengers were ringing the bell. By the time the car…
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Jews in the Court
For years, it has been commonly believed that Jews were banned from England in 1290 and not allowed back until Oliver Cromwell lifted the ban in 1656. But new research, uncovered through means worthy of a first-rate detective novel, has revealed that not only were there Jews in the Britain; they were right under the…
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Ghost Town
Just how (unconsciously, breezily) Catholic is Barcelona? Contemplate, for a moment, the ultra-popular 11 a.m. Saturday exercise class led by Xavi, a step-aerobics guru at the Club Natació Atlètic-Barceloneta. Barceloneta is a beachfront neighborhood that is slightly more than 100 years old and was originally built for dockworkers — once famously painted by Picasso —…
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Hannah Arendt, 100 Years Later
Islamic terrorism is the new totalitarianism. At least that’s the impression one gets from some Western commentators these days. In “Terror and Liberalism,” Paul Berman invoked totalitarianism in order to explain the strikingly modern ideology of Islamism. Joschka Fischer, then Germany’s foreign minister, spoke of a “third totalitarianism.” This past February, Salman Rushdie, Bernard-Henri Lévy…
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Power of Speech
I don’t know about you, but I’m no fan of the sermon. Much as I try — and I do try — to pay rapt attention to the rabbi’s words, my mind tends to wander far, far away from the subject at hand or else is completely taken up with cataloging the grammatical and syntactical…
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What’s in a Home?
The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories By Ilan Stavans TriQuarterly, 144 pages, $22.95. Many of our contemporary Jewish writers use comfort to provide tension, creating characters who are often crippled, and sometimes haunted, by the relative ease of their lives. They live under the shadow of comfort’s flipside — apathy — and grapple almost exclusively…
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Dylan’s Religious Revival: Modern Times and the Timeless
What would happen if Bob Dylan released a politically potent sequel to “The Times They Are a-Changin’” complete with blistering attacks on the War on Terror, the government’s creeping encroachment upon civil liberties, and the persistence of prejudice and discrimination? Would anyone care? Probably not. Just like few have noticed Neil Young’s fierce album of…
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Northern Exposure: Mameloshn’s Unexpected Fate – in Sweden
In the weeks leading up to Sweden’s national election this month, the government put out public service announcements in the press, encouraging its citizens to vote. But one feature was hardly standard issue: The bulletins informed the readers how to get voting instructions in Yiddish. The bulletins served as a reminder of — or, more…
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Yiddish שילאַ רײַך, באַליבטע ייִדיש־לערערין אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס, איז אַוועקSheila Reich, beloved LA Yiddish teacher, has died
אין קלאַס זענען די סטודענטן אָפֿט געווען אױף פֿאַרשידענע ניװאָען אָבער זי האָט זיך אָפּגעגעבן מיט יעדן באַזונדער.