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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Crafting Modern Midrash in the Form of Fiction
Fallen By David Maine St. Martin’s Press, 256 pages, $23.95. * * *| In this strange time when even ideas about the beginning of the world have become a political battleground, it seems there is no story that so sharply divides as the biblical account of creation. When Arizona Christians lobby to install verses from…
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The Match Heard ’Round the World
In June 1938, 60 million people — half of the American public — tuned their radios to a boxing match in Yankee Stadium. The heavyweight championship pitted Joe Louis, a black American, against Max Schmeling, a German, and the fight served as an undercard of sorts for World War II. Schmeling and Louis had fought…
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From the Yiddish Songbook to the American Canon
There is a shocking, gloriously transcendent moment that occurs nine minutes into “From Shtetl to Swing,” an hour-long documentary about the influence of Yiddish culture on American music. The program is presented October 5 as part of PBS’s “Great Performances.” Until this point in the show, we only have been told that the experience, and…
The Latest
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Writing a Rarity: The Happy Love Story
Accidents By Yael Hedaya Metropolitan Books, 464 pages, $28.00. * * *| In Yael Hedaya’s world, relationships don’t often work out. “Housebroken,” her first book translated into English (Metropolitan Books, 2001), was chockfull of disastrous interactions — a man and woman try to save their broken union by adopting a stray dog; a young woman…
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Singer and Poet Gets Capitol Honor
The nation’s top honor for folk art went to a Yiddish singer, songwriter and poet from the Bronx last week. Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman was one of 12 honorees to receive a National Heritage Fellowship at a September 22 ceremony on Capitol Hill. “She is a master of Yiddish song and poetry,” said Dana Gioia, chairman of…
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A Blessing On Your Head
Rabbi Katz pats his stiff hand on a yellowing translation of the Torah. “My boy, we read this very week, in Nitzavim, that in order for us as a people to receive the Almighty’s blessings, we must obey His laws. So, what you’re requesting is obviously impossible. Nothing personal.” “Nothing personal?” Matt — thin, 27,…
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Women Trailblazers Honored
“I am convinced that there is a place in hell for women who do not help each other,” honoree Madeleine Korbel Albright said at the September 7 Women Who Changed the Landscape for Women dinner. The event was held at The Waldorf-Astoria and was sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Women. “When I…
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September 23, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD Officer Miller saw that a small crowd had gathered in Manhattan at the corner of Second Avenue and 2nd Street, despite orders by New York City’s chief of police that such gatherings not be permitted — particularly in bad neighborhoods like the Lower East Side. He told the group…
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Whither Utopia?
Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought For an Anti-Utopian Age By Russell Jacoby Columbia University Press, 240 pages, $24.95. * * *| Utopianism has gotten a bad rap over the past 50 years. The desire to secure happiness through the basic transformation of social institutions has been blamed for most of the past century’s carnage, from Hitler’s…
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A Novelist Defends Zion’s Idealists
Mandrakes From the Holy Land By Aharon Megged Translated by Sondra Silverston Toby Press, 220 pages, $22.95. * * *| In an impassioned 1994 article in Ha’aretz, Aharon Megged, one of Israel’s most accomplished novelists, suddenly permitted himself to address in his own voice the disdain with which many of his colleagues are given to…
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Rashanim Offers a Series of Surprises
Nothing ages faster than the avant-garde. In music, in dance and in the visual arts, yesterday’s innovation quickly becomes today’s commonplace — all of which makes saxophonist and composer John Zorn’s achievements in Jewish music all the more remarkable. Zorn began his explorations of radical Jewish culture in the early 1990s. By mid-decade, he had…
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