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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The Poetry of Mature Experience
The Sights Along the Harbor: New and Collected Poems By Harvey Shapiro Wesleyan University Press, 288 pages, $29.95. * * *| In his mother’s recollection, Harvey Shapiro’s first words were in Yiddish. Born in 1924 to an observant Jewish family, he lived as a child first on the Lower East Side, then high enough up…
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A Gem Among Giants
Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time (Lives in Music Series No. 8) By Phillip Ramey Pendragon Press, 334 pages, $32. * * *| Flip to the back of Phillip Ramey’s“Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time,” and you’ll find a clue as to why Fine, once a major figure in American art…
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Offerings of the Willing Heart
The second half of Exodus is largely concerned with the construction of the tabernacle. For me, the most evocative aspect of all the detailed descriptions is this: And Moses spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying: “This is the thing which the Lord commanded, saying: Take from among you an offering…
The Latest
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March 24, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD The courtroom was packed with both supporters and detractors of the 17th Street “Jewish Mystic,” Julius Benjamin, who was on trial for practicing medicine without a license. While some people called him a charlatan, others said he performed miracles. Max Zaks testified that he was crippled in one leg…
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Curses Show Language’s Creativity
Lita Epstein does not have a dirty mouth. Her pen, however, is filthy. Epstein’s forthcoming book, “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Say It in Yiddish” (Citadel Press), offers page after page of Yiddish insults and curses, some of which would make even the bawdiest of sailors blush. The book, due in stores next month,…
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Looking for Inspiration in All The Wrong Places
Memoirs of a Muse By Lara Vapnyar Pantheon, 224 pages, $22.95. * * *| Tanya, the heroine of Lara Vapnyar’s first novel, “Memoirs of a Muse,” and (as far as Tanya is concerned) of numerous masterpieces yet to be created, doesn’t claim to be an expert on literature, but when it comes to choosing among…
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Labor’s Loves Lost
Paul Buhle is a senior lecturer in history and American civilization at Brown University. A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists In New York By Tony Michels Harvard University Press, 352 pages, $27.95. * * *| The tale of Jewish socialists on Manhattan’s Lower East Side offers one of those urban legends, alive with so…
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The Moses Between Egypt and Mendelssohn
Maimonides Sherwin B. Nuland. Schocken, 256 pages, $19.95. * * *| Three Moseses have decisively shaped Jewish history. On one end is Moses the Egyptian, a lawgiver and political leader whose vision established the path for a monotheistic revolution, thus defining the spiritual boundaries of a people. On the opposite end is Moses Mendelssohn, whose…
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A New Name for an Old Crime
Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe By Benjamin Lieberman Ivan R. Dee, 416 pages, $27.50. * * *| While Serb paramilitaries were driving Muslims from their homes in Bosnia during the spring of 1992 in an effort to rid the region of its “Muslim fundamentalist” population, Serb radio stations proudly coined…
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Understanding the Philosopher of Auschwitz
Adorno By Stefan Müller-Doohm; translated by Rodney Livingstone Polity Press, 667 pages, $75. * * *| Adorno: A Political Biography By Lorenz Jäger; translated by Stewart Spencer Yale University Press. 248 pages. $35. * * *| Although Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the two most prominent German philosophers of the postwar period (the other…
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Tracing the History of Jewish Autobiography
Being for Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography By Marcus Moseley Stanford University Press, 650 pages, $70. * * *| ‘This is the Life Story of Judah Aryeh…. Few and evil have been the days of my life in this world… on Monday the 28th day of Nissan — corresponding to the 23d day of…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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