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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Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah
Mrs. Greenberg’s Messy Hanukkah By Linda Glaser With Illustrations by Nancy Cote Albert Whitman & Company —— It’s the first night of Hanukkah, but Mama tells Rachel they won’t be having company — or making latkes — until next week. No company? No latkes? Rachel can’t wait! She goes next door to Mrs. Greenberg’s house,…
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Now for the Hard Part: Teaching Morality
With a new baby girl and two toddler sons, my husband and I have very little use for alarm clocks these days. It is usually still dark outside when the boys creak open our bedroom door and tiptoe together to the foot of our bed, whispering, “I want milk please”; “Let’s build a LEGO castle,…
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It’s a Miracle! A Hanukkah Storybook
It’s a Miracle! A Hanukkah Storybook By Stephanie Spinner With Illustrations by Jill McElmurry Atheneum Books for Young Readers —— Owen Block is the OCL — official candle lighter — of his family, and Grandma Karen is the official storyteller. Each night, after the menorah is lit, she tucks him into bed and asks, “Ready…
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Once Upon a Jewish Fairy Tale
Recently I joined my colleague, Nick, a visiting professor from Rhodes, to shop for suitable books to read to his children here in the States. He was appalled by the available choices. “Incredible. You Americans still tell your children stories about princes and princesses? Didn’t you fight a revolution to get beyond that?” He decided…
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Reviving the Flaming Tea Ceremony
For many Jews from Eastern Europe, holiday celebrations were bound up with sugar cubes and tea — and Hanukkah was no exception. In keeping with the custom of making it a “Festival of Lights,” many Russian Jews practiced what is known as the Flaming Tea Ceremony. Celebrants dip lumps of sugar in brandy onto teaspoons…
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A Room of Their Own –– Again; Exploring the Latest Revival in Girls’ Schools
As a veteran reporter who spent years covering California’s male-dominated State House, Ilana DeBare had long seen that women were disadvantaged in a system fueled by the late-night backroom deals of chummy male insiders. But when she started covering the state’s booming technology industry — a new field, allegedly driven more by innovation than by…
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Stern College Turns 50
As a member of the second class of Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women, Ginger Socol remembers shopping on 34th Street, taking biology classes with a total of three students and living in a hotel suite while the dormitory was under construction. Most of all, though, she remembers her roommates — Orthodox young women from…
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America on the Couch: Jews and the Shaping of Therapeutic Culture
Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the 20th Century By Andrew R. Heinze Princeton University Press, 456 pages, $29.95. * * *| The convergence of religion and psychology is one of the signal facts of 20th-century Western culture. In retrospect, the relationship seems obvious: On the one hand, many functions once performed by…
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Nodding Off on Wedlock’s Bed
This week’s portion contains Jacob’s dream and many other passages that have given rise to midrashim. One of these passages is Genesis 30:1: And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and she said unto Jacob: ‘Give me children or else I die.’ Robert Burns (1759-1796) was inspired by…
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November 19, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • A strike has begun at the Cohen Brothers paper-box factory in New York City’s Bowery. The unusual thing about the 250 strikers is that most are young girls. In an obvious attempt to take advantage of their underage employees, the Cohen brothers, all religious Jews, paid them starvation wages. In addition,…
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The Return Of Shylock
In November 2003, when billionaire George Soros was first establishing himself as a force in the presidential campaign, a writer for the Web site GOPUSA spelled out his feelings about the financier with great conciseness when he referred to him as a “Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock.” Shakespeare’s most famous villain may be more than 400…
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