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 ‘Fear’: Tips on Chutzpah
Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life By Erica Jong Tarcher, 304 pages, $22.95. * * *| At the end of “Fear of Flying,” Erica Jong’s 1973 best-selling novel, the lead character lists potential female heroes. Simone de Beauvior? Too obsessed with Sartre. Sylvia Plath? Stuck her head in an oven. Doris Lessing? Her female…
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Our Own Superhero: A Matter of Pryde
Bar mitzvah boys can be divided, if you crunch the dataset right, into two groups: those who wished over their bar mitzvah cakes for superpowers, and those who wished to meet their favorite girl with superpowers: Kitty Pryde. Granted this might be limited to the subset of bar mitzvah boys who know what a dataset…
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A Mosaic of Jewish Music in America
The old Woody Allen joke about a book of great Jewish athletes — it’s more of a pamphlet, really — wouldn’t work with great Jewish composers. So when pianists Joel Sachs and Cheryl Seltzer, co-directors of the new music ensemble CONTINUUM, decided to present a program of works by modern American Jewish composers last month…
The Latest
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Shelumiel — The First Schlemiel?
In the German Colony neighborhood of Jerusalem, a leafy residential lane bears the name Yitzhak Crémieux Street. If that name sounds only half-familiar, perhaps the name Adolphe Crémieux rings a louder bell? A prominent Jewish political figure in 19th-century France, Crémieux combined a long career in elective office with service to the Jewish community, including…
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Looking Back May 26, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD New York City’s East Side Pushcart Peddlers Association held meetings this week to protest the unjust way in which Jewish pushcart peddlers are being treated. They say that Jewish peddlers who request licenses are frequently turned away, whereas Christian peddlers get their licenses without a fuss. In addition, there…
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In Defense of the (High) Art of Writing
The Din in the Head By Cynthia Ozick Houghton Mifflin, 256 pages, $24. * * *| It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that any person in possession of a large personal library will covet, if he or she does not already own, essays written by Cynthia Ozick. Why? Because Ozick’s paragraphs contain equal measures…
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Amid the Smokestacks, An American Dream
Now You See It… Stories from Cokesville, PA By Bathsheba Monk Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 240 pages, $22. * * *| Cokesville, Pa., is a gritty fictional American shtetl. It is populated by Polish-Catholic émigrés and anchored by the steel mills in which they are employed. It is a place both defined and defeated by…
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Rivalry In the Time Of Cholera
An Imperfect Lens By Anne Roiphe Shaye Areheart Books, 304 pages, $25. * * *| Disease, horrifying as it can be in real life, usually makes for a good read — gripping, intense, fearful and always entertaining. Veteran novelist Anne Roiphe’s latest book, “An Imperfect Lens,” is a riveting work of historical fiction, taking the…
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Looking Back May 19, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD After nearly 14 years in conditions worse than those of Alfred Dreyfus on Devil’s Island, anarchist Alexander Berkman finally has been freed. He was met by a small group of close friends who took him to Chicago and then to St. Louis, where he plans to settle. On his…
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Dissecting the Body and Soul of the Common Man
Everyman By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin, 192 pages, $24. * * *| My grandmother Rebecca lived to 100, but, as was typical for a person of her time and place, from an early age she witnessed severe illness. Born on the outskirts of Vilna, she arrived at Ellis Island in 1901 as a young woman,…
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Lust, Faith and Phylacteries
‘Mendy: A Question of Faith” is cinematic proof that putting faith and sex in a movie doesn’t make the film about religion, and doesn’t necessarily make it sexy. In this cheesily staged feature, which is showing through May 26 at Cinema Village in Manhattan, the titular character (Ivan Sandomire) is a Satmar Hasid who has…
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