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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Survivor Uses Her Life as a Teaching Tool
Ice cream is what Gerda Weissmann Klein remembers most about birthdays during her youth in Bielsko, Poland. In those days, ice cream was made by hand only in the summer, and every year Klein’s mother made the first batch of the season in her honor. By early May, the lilacs were in bloom, but a…
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Deli Maker Finds Delicious Way To Raise Funds
The heads of Abeles & Heymann Gourmet Kosher Provisions are thinking about hot dogs in a whole new way. Concerned about the rising costs of education at Jewish day schools, A&H co-presidents Seth Leavitt and David Flamholz have decided to take action. They recently launched A&H for ABCs, a yearlong initiative in which a percentage…
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A Babel Biographer Chases His Moving Target
Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel By Jerome Charyn Random House, 224 pages, $24.95. * * *| Isaac Babel was an iconoclast whose small, mysterious oeuvre, delivered in a deft, compact Russian shaped at a time of revolution, becomes more alluring with the passage of time. As Jerome Charyn puts it in…
The Latest
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Day School in N.Y. ‘Adopts’ Gaza’s Displaced Students
It started as a simple letter-writing campaign: The students at an Orthodox boys’ school in Monsey, N.Y., sent notes expressing their sympathy to kids their age who were forced to move last summer when Israel evacuated settlements in Gaza and parts of the West Bank. But then the project grew, and soon Yeshiva Darchei Noam…
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Not Your Mother’s Neil Diamond
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A hip and really hot music producer seeks out an old and established artist — perhaps a bit past his prime — and talks him into working on an album. The point of the collaboration is to emphasize the singer’s craft and the song itself, and so…
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Day Schools Balance Science, Religion
Since they are private institutions, Jewish day schools do not face church-state issues when it comes to teaching about creation. Nonetheless, the subject still poses challenges for day school educators. “Families who choose religious education do so with the understanding that schools will take on issues of morality, faith and theology,” said Dr. Marc Kramer,…
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America Gets a New Tocqueville
Following in the footsteps of his countryman, famed French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy — or BHL, as he is widely known — will release “American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville,” the result of a yearlong journey through America. Though Lévy is careful not to compare himself with Tocqueville — the 19th-century French aristocrat…
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Foundation To Send Hebrew School Teachers to Israel
Phyllis Osher, who has been teaching Hebrew school students about Israel for years, has not been there herself since 1982. That will change in August, when Osher goes to Israel on a new program of the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, which will pay for 40 Hebrew and pre-school teachers to go to Israel for…
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Looking Back January 20, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD In New York, Sam Abelman’s First Street Saloon became the scene of a wild brawl after Abelman and his barkeep demanded payment of 10 cents from a group of about a dozen men who were playing billiards there. Abelman’s request for the dime was met with a barrage of…
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Protecting Jewish Health
A new exhibit at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York highlights the history of a little-known organization called Society for the Protection of Jewish Health. Assistant Curator Jesse Aaron Cohen offers a preview of “Fighting for a Healthy New Generation,” which was curated by Krysia Fisher. In 1912, the Obshchestwo Zdravookhraneniya Yevreyev…
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Photographer Puts the Whole Jewish World in Focus
Zion Ozeri has made his living photographing Jews all over the world, from the mountains of Yemen to the streets of New York to the jungles of Peru. He has exhibited his work in galleries and museums and has published his photographs in newspapers, books and magazines. And now, Ozeri is bringing his work to…
Most Popular
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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News Middlebury College Hillel votes to rebrand, distancing from parent group on Israel
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Fast Forward Kristof column alleging Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners sparks outrage, scrutiny and debate among Jews
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Fast Forward From Rutgers speaker to Kristof column, disputed dog rape claim against Israel goes mainstream
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Fast Forward Rand Paul’s son apologizes after reportedly making antisemitic attack on Rep. Mike Lawler
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Fast Forward Long Island school district pays $125K to settle lawsuit over erased pro-Palestinian student art