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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This Month At Novel Jews
On Wednesday, March 8, 2006, the Novel Jews monthly reading series will feature Wayne Hoffman, who will read from his forthcoming debut novel, “Hard” (Carroll & Graf) along with Aaron Hamburger, who will read from his novel, “Faith for Beginners” (Random House, 2005). Wayne Hoffman, currently managing editor of the Forward, has written for The…
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From Hard by Wayne Hoffman
Each month, in coordination with our reading series in New York, the Forward publishes an excerpt from the work of that month’s series’ guest or guests. This month, we will feature readings by Aaron Hamburger and Forward managing editor Wayne Hoffman (for full details, please see sidebar). Below is an excerpt from Hoffman’s debut novel…
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German Director Performs Penance Through Film
In the 1940s, German director Marc Rothemund’s grandmother pledged her allegiance to Hitler and to Nazi Germany. Sixty years later, in what might be seen as an act of penance, Rothemund is offering audiences the story of a German girl who took a very different path from the director’s own ancestor. And recognition has come…
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Looking Back February 24, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD The Hasidic Rebbe of Kopists, near the city of Mohilev, is known throughout the region for his wise ways — and not only among Jews. It is well known that nearby nobles as well as peasants often seek out the rebbe for his sage advice. Therefore, local gendarmes and…
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‘The Accidental Empire’
‘We are divided,” Haim Gouri’s mother had taught him, “between those with meager spirits and those with torn souls.” That night, more than ever, Gouri counted himself as one of the raggedly ripped souls, and he envied the other sort. A solitary Israeli army jeep growled north from Jerusalem on the road winding through the…
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The Art of Disaster
The Art of Disaster The Catastrophist By Lawrence Douglas * * *| Other Press, 276 pages, $24.95.When we first meet Daniel Wellington, the protagonist of Lawrence Douglas’s debut novel, he is lying awake, waiting for the 3:30 a.m. passage of Amtrak’s Montreal to Washington express. He gets out of bed, witnesses the diesel engine as…
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Classical Training A Conversation With Allan Greenberg
Next month, Allan Greenberg will be the first American to receive classical architecture’s highest honor, The Richard H. Driehaus Prize, awarded by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. For Greenberg, the prize is not only a recognition of his success as an architect, but also a validation of his great claim that in…
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From a Popular Composer, More Than Meets the Ear
If you had to choose a single word to describe the contemporary Jewish music scene, “eclectic” would be a good one. The klezmer revival of the 1970s begat klezmer-jazz, which in turn begat klezmer-funk, klezmer-punk and scores of other klezmer-hyphenates, all of which now coexist happily with Sephardic pop, Mizrahic hip hop, and innumerable other…
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Fame’s Good Fortune
Recently I came across an article in a Hebrew newspaper that bore the caption “Children of Celebrities Are Fed Up With Strange Names Given Them by Their Parents.” The article began with the complaint of Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof, the 16-year-old daughter of singer Bob Geldof, that she would have preferred something…
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The Choice of Staying In Or Getting Out
Exodus 21:2-6 (and, with small variants, Deuteronomy 15:12-18) prescribes that a Hebrew slave, after six years’ servitude, must be offered the opportunity to regain freedom, and the consequences if he chooses to stay in servitude: If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he be married then his wife shall…
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February 17
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD New York City’s Grand Street Post office has been besieged by Jews asking about the money orders they’ve sent to their relatives in Russia who are currently suffering a wave of pogroms. Dozens of Jews came to the Forward’s offices this week complaining that the money they’ve sent to…
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