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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Mini-schools Push ‘Jewish Literacy’ for Adults
In the fall, four new Florence Melton Adult Mini-Schools will open throughout North America, joining ranks with the more than 60 such schools already in operation worldwide. The world’s largest Jewish adult education network, the Florence Melton Adult Mini-Schools have expanded at a steady rate of four to five schools per year, with graduates now…
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A New Book Examines How Yiddish Became the Language of Aggravation
Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods By Michael Wex St. Martin’s Press, 320 pages, $24.95. * * *| If you asked me whether I enjoyed Michael Wex’s hilarious and learned book, “Born To Kvetch,” I would find myself in an impossible quandary. To admit the rare pleasure I derived…
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The Wacky Heart of Eastern Europe
Mention Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel, “Everything Is Illuminated,” to readers, and the first character that springs to mind (likely with a smile) is Alex, the heavily accented master of the malapropism who serves as the protagonist’s guide through the wilds of Ukraine. Alex personifies the wacky heart and soul of the new Eastern Europe,…
The Latest
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Asch’s Diamonds
Maybe it’s the fallacy that rewarding literature must be difficult that explains why no scholar has lingered in the literary universe of Polish-born American Yiddish novelist and playwright Sholem Asch (1880-1957). Asch, who published alongside Isaac Bashevis Singer and other luminaries in the Yiddish Forward, was considered a master of Yiddish fiction until a literary…
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August 19, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD In the wake of continuing unrest in Russia, and amid calls for democracy, Tsar Nikolai has begun to make noises about reforms. This is connected to a plan for wealthy Jews to provide huge loans to the Russian monarchy. Europe’s most important Jews are universally against such a plan…
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Crossing Into the Director’s Chair
Like Leo Spivak, the character he plays in “King of the Corner,” Peter Riegert is on the road, selling his wares. But unlike the troubled Spivak, who is trapped in a job he increasingly dislikes — running focus groups for home-safety systems — as he undergoes a massive midlife crisis, Riegert is traveling across the…
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A Fashion Icon Reveals Her Tough Side
“I’m pretty tough,” Diane von Furstenberg explained. No kidding. Sitting barefoot in her expansive office in Manhattan’s hip Far West Village, the princess-turned-socialite-turned-clothing-designer emits a cool vibe that is simultaneously glamorous, stern and relaxed. On a simmering summer afternoon, von Furstenberg looks flawless in white — showing no side effects from the sweltering heat —…
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A Theater Troupe Of One’s Own
A few years ago, a Jewish women’s theater group from Pittsburgh performed a short piece at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s fourth International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy in New York. Called “Dancing With the Torah,” it was about a girl who is banned from the men’s side of the synagogue on the holiday of…
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Honoring My Cousin’s Courage
Sima Vaisman and my father, Lipa (Leon) Halfin, were first cousins. Their mothers were sisters and they lived in the same house in Kishinev, Bessarabia (now Moldova). Sima’s mother, Genia, was a widow. And my grandmother Sarah asked her husband, a well-to-do merchant, to welcome the mother and daughter to live with them. It was…
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Comfort, Comfort
This week’s portion, Va-Et’hanan, includes two of the most famous sections of the Bible, a second version of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:6-18, and the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. One could write endlessly about these crucial texts and their importance for the history of Judaism. However, I’ll focus instead on the Haftarah, Isaiah 40:1-26,…
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Looking Back August 12, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD This week, the Forward received a postcard from one Yidl Zaydman, in the shtetl of Rishkan in Bessarabia. It read as follows: “It’s not so good here, and even worse since the economy is so depressed. There has also been a riot of pogroms nearby, but always in other…
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