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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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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February 25, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • One of our readers has sent in a personal letter from the shtetl of Krinik, near Grodno, in which a small revolution has taken place. The town’s residents have attacked the police. Krinik is known as the birthplace of revolutionary Shmuel Sikorski, the Jewish tanner who, together with Russian revolutionaries, bombed…
The Latest
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Kibbitzing Characters
‘Sphinx, how marvelous of you to know exactly the right hat to wear at 7 o’clock in the morning to meet a friend who has been away!” Oscar Wilde professed to ally Ada Leverson — using his familiar endearment — following his 1897 release from Reading Gaol. Two years’ hard labor served for the crime…
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True Love by Jonathan Wilson A Short Story From the collection “An Ambulance Is on the Way: Stories of Men in Trouble”
Each month, in coordination with our reading series in New York, the Forward publishes an excerpt from the work of that month’s series guest or guests. This month, we will feature readings by Jonathan Wilson and Yael Goldstein (for full details, please see sidebar), and the excerpt we have chosen to highlight is from Wilson’s…
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This Month at Novel Jews
NOVEL JEWS is a downtown reading series that presents provocative and enlightening fiction and literary nonfiction by both today’s literary superstars and the emerging voices of tomorrow. It is co-sponsored by the Sol Goldman 14th Street Y, the JCC in Manhattan and the Forward. Jonathan Wilson is the author of two works of fiction, “The…
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Beyond Research: Ansky’s Chronicle of Tenderness
The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I By S. Ansky Edited and Translated By Joachim Neugroschel Metropolitan Books, 352 pages, $30. * * *| On January 1, 1915, an article was published in a Warsaw-based Yiddish newspaper that appealed to its readers to record their…
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Where Is It Written?
The attractively smiling woman in the black-and-white photograph sits curled on a sofa, looking younger than she tells us she is. She says: “Where is it written that because my hair is gray and I have grandkids, I have to retire? Well, I don’t think so! Oh, sure, I’ll retire someday, I just don’t know…
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You’ve Really Done It This Time
Two men, one old, the other older, walk along the edge of an encampment at the foot of a great mountain. They can hear the keening of thousands, a collective wail of deep sorrow, of eternal repentance. Aaron: Well, you’ve really done it this time. What were you thinking? Moses: Don’t even try to make…
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The Transformative Tale of ‘GI Jews’
GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation By Deborah Dash Moore Harvard University Press, 368 pages, $25.95. * * *| Contemporary Jewish thought has been shaped by the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel and the transformation of the American Jewish community from a distant, peripheral outpost into the hub of…
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Torah Couture
Walking around the classroom, Rabbi Katz returns the weekly homework assignments, stops at Shira’s desk. “Shira, you know our assignments are to summarize each Torah portion, but you copied every single word.” “Details are important,” she says, looking at her returned homework. “A ‘C’? You’re giving me a ‘C’?” Rabbi Katz reminds himself to be…
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