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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March 11, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • To the esteemed editor of the Forward: Recently, I have been going to the Thalia Theater more than to the other Yiddish theaters, but last Sunday I witnessed a scene outside the theater that gave rise to bitter feelings. Next to the Thalia stood a few peddlers, young boys, selling candy…
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The Real Lives Behind the Superheroes
In the late 1930s, comic books presented a relatively small sideshow in the circus of pulp publishing. Then suddenly, in the fall and winter of 1938, following into early 1939, they became the main event. Within a year — by 1940 — 15 million comic books were being sold each month (and this in a…
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A Woman Who Looked Like Dietrich And Wrote Like Woolf
The much revered Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector was born a Jew and buried a Jew, but in between, it seems, she struggled simply to be Clarice, with an accent on the usually silent final syllable, see. If anything, the gorgeous, exotic-looking Lispector wanted only to be seen as a native Brazilian, an identity that her…
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March 4, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • Ten Jewish derelicts were hired to recite Psalms for a person who had died. The relatives of the deceased gave one of them, Aaron Kalish, a bit of cash for all of them. Kalish went out and bought some cake and a bottle of illegally distilled alcohol for the group. He…
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An Israeli Film Juggles High Moral Purpose and Comedy
It’s nice to see a filmmaker indulge his own obsessions as thoroughly as Eytan Fox does with his new film, “Walk on Water.” Fox’s last film, “Yossi & Jagger,” was a gay romance set in the Israeli military, and his new work cooks with the same ingredients, adding in Israeli-German relations and the ever-present specter…
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The Boy From Baku
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life By Tom Reiss Random House, 464 pages, $25.95. * * *| The arid, windswept capital of Azerbaijan is not a tourist mecca. Most travelers to Baku come in search of oil, not romance. But for many Azeris and not a few foreigners, a trip…
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Biblical Memoirs: Cutting Edge or Old Hat?
One of the many questions that postmodernism encourages is who gets to write and to “own” stories. Often the process of “owning” a narrative disenfranchises many of the story’s players, who never realize a platform to advance their own perspectives. One of the best illustrations of this is the Bible, which introduces a host of…
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Among the Tweeds and the Herringbones
19-34 category Winner: Paul Fischer Age: 32 As if I didn’t yet possess the language for silent prayer, I was dismissed from the temple sanctuary during the Amidah as a child. Perhaps it was an attempt to shield me from the vulnerable site of parents wrapped solely in prayers, muttering secret words meant to be…
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Radio Days: A Life Heard
35 and up category Winner: Seymour Zimilover Age: 81 – In the days before television, radio was the major source of entertainment for most people. It was even more important than the movies in that going to the movies was a once or twice-a-week affair, but radio was a seven-day activity. Among the major stations…
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Trouble at Christmastime
15-18 category Winner: Mira Scarvalone Age: 15 I come from an interesting family. My father was raised a Christian and my mother, as an adult, converted to Judaism. I have only one Jewish grandparent. So technically, I am only a quarter Jewish. But I was never faced with the choice of being a Christian, or…
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The Winners; A ‘Naturalized’ New Yorker
10-14 category Winner: Mattie Kahn Age: 12 I am walking down the street when I see a woman reaching up to check that the scarf on her head is in place as she pushes her baby. In an instant I identify the head covering worn by some religious women upon their marriage. To those who…
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