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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August 26, 2005
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD News reports out of Russia indicate horrific pogroms are taking place in Bialystok, Berditchev, Homel, Minsk, Pinsk, Vilna and Bobroisk, among other locales. In these cities and towns, simultaneously and according to the same plan, drunken and enraged soldiers have attacked at workers’ meetings, in clubs and in the…
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The Middle East, Spanish Style
‘Only Human” (“Seres Queridos”) is the first Spanish film to address the Middle Eastern conflict directly. Set in Madrid and designed as a comedy of errors, it is about the Dalinsky family, a neurotic Jewish clan made up of Gloria, a yiddishe mame; her absentee husband, Ernesto, and three adult children: brainy Leni; Tania, a…
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Orthodox Schools Tackle Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Rifka used to believe that Judaism would insulate her from the addictions that plagued her father. The child of a Christian father and a Jewish mother who divorced when she was a small child, she enrolled in an Orthodox day school with the support of her mother, became devoutly observant and threw himself into community…
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The Sting of Divine Wrath
Swelling over large areas of the body, abnormal breathing, tightness in the throat or chest, dizziness, hives, fainting, nausea or vomiting, persistent pain or swelling — these are among the symptoms of a reaction to the sting of a wasp or hornet. “Seek immediate attention,” medical authorities warn us, “if you are stung in the…
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Chabad Makes Major Inroads at Universities
Toward the end of the spring semester this past May, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi and about a dozen students celebrated a major victory at Tufts University. After nearly two years of vying for recognition as an official student group at the liberal arts college in Medford, Mass., Tufts’s student government finally recognized Chabad. Rabbi Tzvi Backman…
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Montessori Movement Offers Jewish Educators an Alternative
Ayelet Lichtash has had a busy summer. In the fall, she will welcome the first class to a new preschool in North Bethesda, Md., that marries a regular Jewish curriculum with the principles of Montessori education. Her summer has been consumed with securing zoning, building a playground, recruiting teachers and inspiring parents to sign up…
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Social Action Month Aims To Boost Student Activism
The month of Heshvan — the second month of the Jewish calendar — is traditionally known as “Bitter Heshvan”; the High Holy Days are over, and gloom sets in as the leaves fall from the trees. A new initiative, however, aims to take some of the bitterness out of Heshvan by transforming it into Jewish…
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Holocaust Program for Teachers Resumes After Hiatus
After being suspended for three years, a summer study program for Holocaust educators resumed last month with a revised itinerary. The Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers Program, initiated by the Jewish Labor Committee in 1984, has been taking teachers to Shoah-related sites in Poland and Israel for two decades. But each summer since 2002, the…
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