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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Unrest Brews at Rebbe’s Resting Place
UMAN, Ukraine – On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the dirt roads on the northern edge of this central Ukrainian town had Jewish worshippers at every turn, transforming the site of a historic massacre into a place of dancing and prayer. The crowd — a collection of black-hatted Hasidim, tie-dyed teenagers from the West…
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September 29, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward Twenty-year-old Molly Schwartz of 209 E. 7th Street in New York City drank poison in her fiance’s Third Avenue jewelry store. Her future husband, Samuel Gilbert, said that Schwartz had come to see him at his workplace to complain that the two of them never would live a comfortable…
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America’s First Cultural Jew
Emma Lazarus has been having a good run recently. Eighteen months ago — some 117 years after her early death from Hodgkin’s disease — John Hollander’s judicious selection of her poetry demonstrated that she was one of the most talented American poets of the 19th century, and far and away the best Jewish one. And…
The Latest
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Walking Away From Icons
Although artist Lazar (El) Markovich Lissitzky flirted with numerous movements — including Suprematism, the Bauhaus, De Stijl and Constructivism — to some he will always be doomed to remain the artist whose work resembles that of Marc Chagall. Many Jewish art enthusiasts, who are often prone to describe everything as Chagall-like, frequently confuse the two…
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Speakeasy Jews
In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture By Ted Merwin Rutgers University Press, 240 pages, $23.95 With its irresistible blend of innocence and envelope-pushing, the Jazz Age — an era of bootleggers, flappers and silent-movie stars — still holds a mythical fascination for today’s audiences. To this end, Ted Merwin,…
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France’s 900-page Cause Célèbre
Parisians are all in a fury, they’re reading in the streets. The newest cause célèbre of the French fall publishing season? A 900-page novel about the Holocaust, written in French by an expatriate Jewish American, 38-year-old Jonathan Littell. Titled “Les Bienveillantes,” which is said to translate, in English, to “The Well-meaning Ones” (though that’s probably…
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Matzo on the Merchandise Table
Ira Kaplan doth protest too much. The guitarist for indie rock band Yo La Tengo — a New Jersey trio known for their encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and for their jazzlike interplay — demurs when asked about his ties to Jewish tradition. “I’m not a practicing Jew,” Kaplan said, in an interview soon after…
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Soldier GirI
In the comic-book frame, we can see the heroine: a squat, somewhat disheveled contrast to the smooth, self-possessed Israeli soldiers by whom she is surrounded. Her eyes, etched with a couple of ink dashes, nevertheless betray both vulnerability and alienation. Peering out of a pouchy Ashkenazic face, they seek out friendship, sex and acceptance from…
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September 22, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward Poultry dealer Morris Frank was hauling a large truckload of chickens in New York City from Harlem to Hester Street, to be used as kapores (sacrifices) for Yom Kippur. The overloaded truck was whizzing down Central Park West when suddenly it smashed into a trolley car at 69th Street….
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Blitzkrieg Flop
The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: a secret History of Jewish Punk By Steven Lee Beeber Chicago Review Press, 272 pages, $24.95. By turns entertaining and infuriating, Steven Lee Beeber’s “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s” is a study in contradictions: Rarely have so many carefully researched facts been placed in service of such deeply flawed arguments. Beeber’s basic…
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A Jew Walks Into a Bar…
Yes, but Is It Good for the Jews? By Jonny Geller Bloomsbury, 208 pages, $15.95. “Our Pal, G-d” and Other Presumptions: A Book of Jewish Humor By Jeffry V. Mallow iUniverse, Inc. 192 pages, $16.95. Oy! The Ultimate Book of Jewish Jokes By David Minkoff St. Martin’s Press, 432 pages, $22.95. Funny is hard. Everyone…
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