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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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,…
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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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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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