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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Listening to Classical on the ‘Cool’ Medium
Marshall McLuhan famously termed television a “hot” medium and radio a “cool” one. The inconsistencies inherent in such artificial divisions notwithstanding, there are fundamental differences between the two. Perhaps above all, one remains the better suited to relaying, and even discussing, music. That point is made every day on radio stations throughout the world, but…
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What Is His Name?
Two men, marked by 80 or more winters, walk in the shadow of Mount Horeb. Aaron: So all I am is some sort of glorified ventriloquist’s dummy? Moses: Well, that’s a harsh way to put it. But in a nutshell… Aaron: I’m the older brother, for crying out loud. Why do I have to be…
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Beyond Tumbala, Tumbala…
In Camp Hemshekh, a Jewish socialist summer camp in Mountaindale, N.Y., where Caroline Chanin first heard Yiddish music, singing was an integral part of the program. At breakfast, in the dimly lit dining room, campers belted out popular camp tunes to the accompaniment of an aging piano; during rest hour, selected campers would rehearse the…
The Latest
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Folksbiene’s ‘Romance’ Sings in the New Year
Every Jewish girl has a list of criteria that her ideal man must meet. But Khane, the bookish heroine of Abraham Goldfaden’s “A Novel Romance,” which is playing — in Yiddish — at the Manhattan JCC until January 2, 2005, has a list longer than most. He must be romantic, of course. And passionate, too….
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Successors to Jacob, Successors to Arafat
In this last portion in Genesis, the children of Israel are on the verge of becoming a people. The next portion opens the book of Exodus with Pharaoh afraid of the potential might of the people (Exodus 1:9) he calls “Ivrim,” and it is as a people that the Ivrim, the children of Israel, go…
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Looking Back December 24, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • Last Saturday night, the police arrested the gang of counterfeiters that has been flooding New York City’s Lower East Side, passing out fake half-dollars and dimes. Among those arrested were East 4th Street residents Frank Schleiman and Elizabeth Reiber. Two other members of their gang were arrested uptown. The police recovered…
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Breaking the Mold of the Sitcom
Why are Jews such experts at laughter? Leo Rosten answered that question as well as anyone could when he characterized Yiddish, the quintessential Jewish tongue, as saturated with irony. When we speak about a Jewish perspective — aside from the religious one — what we often mean is an ironic view of a world known…
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South African Jews Begin To Tell Tales
A Time of Angels By Patricia Schonstein William Morrow, 224 pages, $24.95. —— The Persistence of Memory By Tony Eprile W.W. Norton & Company, 288 pages, $24.95. ——— People Who Have Stolen From Me By David Cohen Picador, Trade paperback, 264 pages, $14. ——- In the decade since the end of apartheid, there’s been an…
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December 17, 2004
100 Years Ago • Ms. Ada Ginsberg came into the office of the Forward and announced that she would like to sell her five-week-old baby. Ms. Ginsberg informed us that since her husband disappeared three months ago, she has been living in Brooklyn with her uncle. Unfortunately, her uncle is in dire financial straits and…
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From the Dawn of Printing Why Rare Hebrew Manuscripts Are Commanding Exorbitant Fees
Early in last month’s sale at Kestenbaum & Company, a New York auction house specializing in rare Hebrew books, when a single leaf of Rashi’s commentary on the Pentateuch came on the block, fevered bidding erupted. This first printed edition of the 11th-century French rabbi’s pre-eminent biblical commentary was produced in the small southern Italian…
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A New Beginning for an Old Master
The Autobiography of God By Julius Lester St. Martin’s Press, 256 pages, $23.95. ——— Julius Lester is the author of more than 30 books, a diverse collection of novels, essays and children’s fables published over a period of 30 years. Now 65 years old and recently retired from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Lester’s latest…
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