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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Osirak, 25 Years Later
Last week marked the 25th anniversary of the Osirak bombing, when Israeli fighter planes bombed a French-built nuclear plant near Baghdad. The destruction of the near-completed reactor, which Israel believed was designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, was met with strong denunciation from the world community. A quarter-century later — with Iraq’s potential…
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Dumb Luck
On my way to Moscow last September, I stopped off in the Ukraine. Since I was going in that direction anyway, I wanted to take a look at my mother’s hometown. The town is called Murafa, and it is a very small town, not even a dot on most maps. If, by some chance, you…
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The Whole Story on Being Half-Jewish
Half/Life: Jewish Tales From Interfaith Homes Edited by Laurel Snyder Soft Skull Press, 280 pages, $14.95. * * *| Much has been written about intermarriage in America, from informal polls and academic research to vituperative op-eds and book-length explorations. And yet, a surprisingly small portion of this literature actually documents the stories and voices of…
The Latest
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What’s in This Name?
Paul Baron writes in an e-mail: “Ikh bin a higer geborener un ikh bin fier un akhtzig yor alt. [I was born in this country and I’m 84 years old.] My father came from what is now Lithuania. He told me that his father, my grandfather, was a shafer (with the ‘a’ pronounced ‘ah’) and…
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The Clouds Lift
‘Y know Torah, Leah Kleinbaum?’ “There was a time.” Leah sighs at this Yiddish-speaking stranger on her doorstep. Only three weeks here and already half of Haifa knows she’s a widow just arrived from Kiev. Who is this man? A farkakte suitor? More chins than she can count, and look how he leans on that…
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A Center Of Creativity Looks Back In Time
In celebration of its 75th anniversary, the Art Center of the 92nd Street Y presents Process and Promise: Art Education and Community at the 92nd Street Y, 1930-2005. The exhibit includes 75 works by current and former faculty members, as well as archival material and photographs detailing the center’s history. The art program was central…
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Metropolita New York
FORWARD, JUNE 16, 2006 Exhibit Great Works: Max Liebermann: From Realism to Impressionism is an exhibition that offers insight into the career and work of the Berlin artist who was once considered a leading figure in the city’s cultural life. Liebermann (1847-1935), a prolific artist born to a wealthy German Jewish family, had a career…
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‘Beyond Insane’ Biblical Paintings
My artist friends think I’m crazy,” said Archie Rand, who is the first to admit that his newest project is “beyond insane.” Indeed, Rand’s series is arguably the most ambitious Jewish art enterprise, perhaps ever: 613 canvases, one per commandment. Surrounded by stacks upon stacks of paintings in his studio, Rand is easy to compare…
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Two Books for the Price of One
Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes By T Cooper Dutton, 416 pages, $24.95. * * *| Things are not what always what they seem in the world of T Cooper. To begin with, there is the title of her second novel, “Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes.” This sort of giddy riffing, where subsequent clauses…
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Remembering How the Yiddish Theater Turned Into Broadway
Last fall, a musician friend who plays on Broadway took me to see the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre’s revival of “On Second Avenue,” a revue chronicling the glory days of Yiddish theater in New York City. As one might expect, the show was heavy on nostalgia. “But the Yiddish theater didn’t really die,” my friend commented…
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ROOFTOP RENAISSANCE
251 West 100th Street, New York, N.Y., 212-865-0600. Scribblers on the Roof: Contemporary American Jewish Fiction Edited by Melvin Jules Bukiet and David G. Roskies Persea Books, 352 pages, $15.95. * * *| At the turn of the past century, New York City’s Lower East Side was more crowded than Calcutta, and out of that…
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