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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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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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…
The Latest
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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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Merry Wonderer of the Night
Marla’s Catholic husband, Billy, sometimes reads the Torah to understand her values. And now, just as they’re slipping into bed, he mentions this week’s portion, Ki Tavo. “It just sounds so… so Christian,” he says. “I figured the Jewish version would be different from what I was taught, but it’s the same: If the Hebrews…
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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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Looking Back September 16, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD “The problem is that the bride is too pretty,” begins an editorial describing the English-language American press’s complaints about Jewish immigrants. Although some of the papers take on an allegedly friendly tone toward the Jews, they complain about how they excel in many aspects of life, from business to…
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Illuminating the Big Screen
Okay, class, here’s a question: You’re watching a movie that stars Elijah Wood, and one of the characters in the film says to him, “The ring is not here because of us. We are here because of the ring.” What movie is it? If you answered “The Lord of the Rings,” two demerits; turns out…
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What Melting Pot?
Name a Woody Allen movie that has a leading black actor in its cast. Now, mention a “Seinfeld” episode in which Elaine, Jerry, George and Kramer socialize in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with some Korean friends. How about a story with Cuban Americans, written by Isaac Bashevis Singer? Movies, television and literature…
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An Author’s Story, Fleshed Out in Flesh
My Body in Nine Parts By Raymond Federman Starcherone Books, 136 pages, $16. * * *| The marketing departments that run America’s publishing houses now dictate to most the definition of literature. Even in the Jewish community, one of the last remaining “focus groups” of avid readers, we have let significant writers slip through the…
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