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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April 22, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • After following three thieves from a store on 14th Street, police uncovered the Allen Street headquarters of an organized shoplifting ring. Upon entering the two-floor dwelling, police arrested Isaac Abramovitch, Sofia Steinberg and Dora Glener, aka Rachel Friedman, and found thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen goods. Police also uncovered the…
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The Praying Atheist A Look at the Poetry of Karl Shapiro
This is the second in a series of three poetry reviews, published in celebration of National Poetry Month. By the late 1940s, Karl Shapiro had already cut an impressive figure in American poetry. He was only 32 when he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. The following year he became the Library of Congress’s consultant…
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A Brief History of an Enduring Forgery
‘Lies have short legs” is a proverb invoked by historian Richard Levy in discussing historical frauds and forgeries. Clearly, in the case of a slew of antisemitic libels — most infamously “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” — such folk wisdom is just plain wrong. “Protocols” may well be the longest-legged lie of modern…
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A Late Pioneer Is Still Pushing Boundaries
What’s so comic, exactly, about comic books? As far back as the Golden Age, when the form flourished in the hands of mostly Jewish American young men, relatively few of the word-and-picture narratives to which we ascribe this label have been primarily concerned with humor. The dominant modes have been action, mystery, horror and romance….
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‘My Version of the Facts’ By Carla Pekelis (Northwestern University Press)
One in a series of occasional excepts from books that catch our eye. Carla Pekelis was born in Rome in 1907, into a comfortably assimilated large extended bourgeois family. At 24, she married Alexander Pekelis, a Jewish Russian émigré who would become a seminal figure in American and international civil rights law. A founding member…
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‘Chassidic’ Jazzman Strives for Authenticity
In music, as in any art, intention and biography can be tricky things. For example, should Richard Wagner’s antisemitism be considered when judging his work? Is it fair to take the composer’s controversial writings into account when evaluating his operas? And does the value of his art really depend on the kind of person he…
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Treif Wasn’t Always Non-kosher
Of all the words contributed by the Yiddish language to modern American English, “kosher” is one of the more common — and, as a term neither coarse nor derisive, an exception to a general rule. American dictionaries frequently also list its antonym, treif (spelled with or without the “i”), defining it as “not kosher and…
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Every Jew a Canny Yankee
The American Poets Project seeks to present America’s most significant poets in inexpensive editions. In celebration of National Poetry Month, over the next three weeks David Kaufmann will look at the work of three Jewish poets included in the project, beginning with Emma Lazarus and followed by Karl Shapiro and Muriel Rukeyser. It has been…
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‘Women of the Book’: A Photo Essay
The nature of Jewish women’s creativity in artists’ books is brilliantly explored in a traveling exhibition, Women of the Book: Jewish Artists, Jewish Themes, curated by Judith A. Hoffberg. This contemporary art form, conceptually based on illuminated manuscripts, includes 73 artists’ books — all handmade or limited editions — that explore personal narratives, Jewish identity,…
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Standing Firm Through Moscow’s Building Boom
From Mikhail Khazanov’s cluttered offices in central Moscow, he can see the city come into view as a vibrant and chaotic mosaic. But Khazanov is more than an observer. As one of Moscow’s premier architects, his projects have shaped the urban fabric of the place where he has lived and worked all his life. His…
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Counting the Gray Lady’s Sins
‘Photos don’t normally appear on this page. But it’s time for us to look squarely at the victims of our indifference.” And with that, Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times and its op-ed page’s most morally indignant voice, used his semi-weekly space this past February 23 to hold up before our eyes the…
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