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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Behind the Scenes and on the Mic
Jews have a long history in hip hop and much to be proud of — both behind the scenes and on the microphone. The presence is especially significant on the business side of things: For many years, Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest and Slick Rick were all managed by Lyor Cohen, who went on to…
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Honoring the Hustlers of the Record Business
Machers and Rockers: Chess Records And the Business of Rock & Roll By Rich Cohen W.W. Norton, 220 pages, $22.95. * * *| I admire Rich Cohen’s writing, but I also admire his project. Cohen’s proj- ect, in all his books, is to talk about Jews neither poor nor rich. These Jews, they got out…
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Music From the World’s Kosher Kitchens
A Wandering Feast By Yale Strom And Elizabeth Schwartz Jossey-Bass, 272 pages, $24.95. ——– In 1981, when Yale Strom undertook his first journey to Central and Eastern Europe, you couldn’t use the word klezmer without having to pause to explain it. The klezmer revival was still gathering steam when Strom attended a concert that inspired…
The Latest
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A Slew of New CDs To Take Into 2005
Madonna is probably the world’s most famous quasi-Jewish musician. Next time she goes on tour, she might consider bringing along some of the following artists, thus allowing her star to cast some rays of light on them and to do for contemporary Jewish music what she’s done for her friends from The Kabbalah Centre. There’s…
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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…
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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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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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