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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Study’s Claim On Intelligence Of Ashkenazim Spurs a Debate
The biological distinctiveness of ethnic groups is fraught scientific territory, but a new study plunges into the debate by theorizing that the high intelligence of Ashkenazic Jews is in the genes. The study, which will be published in the upcoming issue of Journal of Biosocial Science, argues that natural selection favored more intelligent Jews during…
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Iran Sanction Bill Loses Momentum As Administration Presses Diplomacy
WASHINGTON — The pro-Israel lobby’s top legislative priority — a bill aimed at tightening sanctions on Iran — is losing momentum in Congress now that the Bush administration is urging congressional leaders to hold off in favor of diplomatic efforts to quell Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Two weeks ago, at the annual policy conference of the…
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Restore the American Dream By Addressing the State of Unions
My grandfather came to the United States from Austria in the early 1900s and found work as a butcher. Back then, this was a country where if you worked hard, you had a reasonable chance of achieving the American dream. Immigrant workers built a strong union movement that raised living standards — not just for…
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In Airwaves War, Israeli Army Takes Its Case to Arab Media
JERUSALEM — Eitan Arusy, the Israeli military’s point man in dealing with the Arab media, earned his paycheck May 19. That day, millions of Arab viewers watching the evening news on Al Jazeera were treated to footage from an Israeli army drone. The 10-second clip depicted a missile strike on a group of Hamas members…
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Plan To Revive Biblical Sanhedrin Receives Boost
A nascent effort to re-establish the ancient rabbinical body of the Sanhedrin received a significant boost Monday when world-renowned scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz agreed to serve as the body’s president. The original Sanhedrin, the supreme legislative body in ancient Israel, comprised 71 leading scholars who issued rulings on a wide array of ritual and policy…
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‘Who Is a Taoist?’ Principal’s Job Hinged on Definition
Academic politics are often esoteric and never pretty. But in what appears to be a first, the fate of a middle-school principal in West Orange, N.J., was determined by a rabbinic debate over the definition of “who is a Taoist.” For months, Aaron Kriegel, a pulpit rabbi in West Essex, N.J., has urged officials at…
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June 10, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • As is well known, the Bund is the most active Jewish self-defense organization that works to protect the Jews during the wave of pogroms that has recently engulfed the Pale of Settlement. It is our duty to help the Bund arm Jews so that they can protect themselves. The Bund’s Central…
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A Buried Treasure, Unearthed by Chance
In 2000, Time Magazine asked its Israel photographer, David Rubinger, to help the magazine put together its “Century” issue, dedicated to great images of the 20th century. Rubinger — himself an Israel Prize-winning photojournalist, famed for his image of Israeli paratroopers at the Western Wall during the 1967 War — began working on the project….
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Tango: Not Jewish, But Not 100% Not Jewish
‘I’m not Jewish — but I’m not 100% not Jewish,” jokes innovative tango musician and sometime klezmer bassist Pablo Aslan. Much the same might be said of the tango itself. The origins of the tango aren’t entirely clear. Some believe that the dance form, born in the slums of Buenos Aires in the 1880s, derived…
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June 3, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • A wild episode occurred this week in Max Solomon’s 19th Street skirt factory, located in New York City. The factory employs 400 workers. One of them, a presser, walked into the boss’s office to ask for his paycheck. When the boss said he didn’t have it, the presser demanded his pay….
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The Man Behind The Equation
Albert Einstein looms over the 20th century. He was undoubtedly the greatest intellect of the past 100 years, a man whose very name is now synonymous with “genius.” His rise to fame began on June 30, 1905, when a German physics journal published a seemingly innocuous article titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” —…
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