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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Before There Was Wal-Mart, There Was Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck And Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South By Peter M. Ascoli Indiana University Press, 392 pages, $35. * * *| Although few remember, Sears once set the pace for the mass-market world of retail shopping in ways that Wal-Mart does now. Perhaps even…
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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…
The Latest
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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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Taking Care of Husbands
A husband suspects his wife of adultery, a capital crime. He takes her before the priest, who makes her drink a witches’ brew of holy water and dust from the tabernacle floor. She makes a solemn declaration: If she is innocent, the bitter water will have no effect, but if guilty, she will experience acute…
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A History Of Style
Vogue magazine did not exist in the 15th century, but this didn’t stop Europeans of that era from keeping up to date on cutting-edge trends in clothing and fashion. Curious about the customs of people living in other parts of the world, early modern Europeans read costume books and travelogues that had images depicting styles…
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A Very Special Episode: ‘Everwood’ Series Finale Has the Rite Stuff
The fictional television town of Everwood, Colo., has no synagogue and no rabbi, not even a fictional one. Its leading citizen is played by the palpably WASPy Treat Williams, and its network — The WB — gave birth to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Beauty and the Geek.” So it might be the last place,…
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Good Guys and Bad Guys
Who are the good guys? That’s what every well-meaning European, left-wing European, intellectual European, liberal European always wants to know, first and foremost. Who are the good guys in the film and who are the bad guys. In this respect Vietnam was easy: The Vietnamese people were the victims, and the Americans were the bad…
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The Enduring Power of ‘Education’
My 13-year-old son, Menachem, is my valued chavruta, or study partner; he has a keen and creative mind, and I hope he will one day become a true talmid chochom, or religious scholar. We study Talmud together every evening and Sabbath; Menachem’s mornings at yeshiva are also filled with the study of religious texts. But…
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Returning to Bethlehem
THE BOOK OF RUTH IS READ ON SHAVUOT ‘We should never have left Bethlehem,” the older woman was saying. “It was bad enough when Elimelech died; what a shock to my system. I blame him for what happened to my boys. Not to mention, there was this parcel of land….” “Your boys…,” Ruth thought sadly….
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