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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Translating Torah
Of all the devarim — “words” or, more generally, “things” — in the Book of Devarim, or Deuteronomy, few attract less notice than the first five verses. Often set apart as a separate, and introductory, paragraph in modern translations, these verses — as opaque in their syntax as they are in their geographical references —…
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July 28
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD New York’s Jewish Quarter witnessed one of its most horrible scenes this week when Rebecca Greenberg, a mother of three, took her own life by slashing her throat and leaping out of a third-story window. The wife of Sam Greenberg, the woman lived with her three children, who range…
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Book Kaddish
Several months ago, I happened to visit a Jewish library in New York that was located in a building adjacent to the one in which I was staying. The library still has an old-fashioned card catalog. I leafed through the cards around my family name until I came across a book by Y.M. Rubinstein. I…
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July 21
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD This week the Forward gave away a brand-new copy of Alexander Harkavy’s English-Yiddish dictionary as a prize in the newspaper’s “Best Joke” contest. Originally the editors wanted to pick one joke as the winner, but the paper’s joke committee couldn’t decide, so they chose a final six. Among the…
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Lower East Side Story
Up from Orchard Street Eleanor Widmer Bantam, 400 pages, $23. * * *| Orchard Street: The name alone conjures images from the collective memory, snapshots of street peddlers, of rat-infested tenements, of aged scholars pacing the streets, their sidelocks rhythmically clapping against their ears. For readers of Jewish literature, the Lower East Side brings to…
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The Jewish Salsero
In 1957, a 19-year-old named Lawrence Kahn traveled to Cuba after being entranced by the Latin music he had been hearing in New York City. Concerned that the Cubans would have trouble pronouncing his name, he dropped the Kahn and changed his name to Larry Harlow. The switch proved useless, first because Harlow wasn’t any…
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Blood or Politics?: Parsing Nazi Intentions
The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust By Jeffrey Herf Belknap Press, 416 pages, $29.95. * * *| The question that every student of the Holocaust wants answered — the deceivingly simple “Why?” — is at once the most elementary and most maddening one to ask. Astonishingly, even with the…
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The Man Who Brought the Melting Pot to the Stage
From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Plays By Israel Zangwill Edited by Edna Nahshon Wayne State University Press 363 pages, $34.95. * * *| Long before “diversity” became a cultural buzzword, playwright and novelist Israel Zangwill coined a phrase that would become an indelible part of America’s language of self-description. The…
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‘Adele’ Gets Her Close-up
Maria Altmann has had some year. On January 15 — one month before her 90th birthday — a Viennese court ordered the Republic of Austria to give up all claims to five Gustav Klimt paintings and return them to their rightful owner, Altmann and her family, who are based in Los Angeles. Then, Altmann —…
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Somewhere in Africa
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo By Peter Orner Little, Brown, 320 pages, $23.95. * * *| Larry Kaplanski’s name says it all, bringing to mind used car dealers or traveling salesmen wearing old striped shirts and older blazers, balding, doggedly fumbling for the keys to their Buick LeSabre as they move on to the…
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Sacred Massacre
The first commandment, which says God is the only God, that He is the God of the Children of Israel whom He brought out of Egypt; that we must worship no other gods and obey His laws, precedes, in order and import, the law to which intuition gives pride of place, the commandment not to…
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