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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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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Deep Roots, Far-flung Branches
This month, CLAL-The National Center for Learning and Leadership will publish a tribute book to coincide with its 30th -anniversary dinner. The tribute book will feature the work of Moico Yaker, a Peruvian-born artist who currently splits his time between Lima and New York. “Moico shatters the false divide between Jewish and human, bridging the…
The Latest
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The ‘Kosher Bachelor’ Finds Fun at Food Fest
When I first approached Shuli Madmone’s table at Kosherfest, he took one look at my press badge and said, “Have I got a story for you.” Madmone is a second-generation spice retailer whose parents had a retail operation in Israel. His company, WholeSpice.com, sells whole and freshly ground spices with a slightly up-market bent. But…
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Who Is a Jewish Traitor?
In this politically heated season, some Jews are eager to label others Jews, including political leaders, as traitors; many more refuse to think in these terms altogether, finding the entire exercise distasteful. But we can’t afford either this rush to judgment or such easy dismissal of the challenge. Traitors endanger the core commitments by which…
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An American Journalist’s Hasidic Tale
The Rabbi of 84th Street: The Extraordinary Life of Haskel Besser By Warren Kozak HarperCollins, 200 pages, $24.95. * * *| Since the era of the Baal Shem Tov and the first Hasidic leaders, one of the primary attractions of Hasidism as a movement has been the Hasidic story. A little shaggy-dog — a bit…
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Beef Goy Ish Ah Kupp, And Other Gems
Just the other day, I picked up a copy of a cookbook that I had not seen since I was a child; back then, it occupied pride of place in my mother’s kitchen. As I held “The Chinese-Kosher Cookbook” in my hand and made my way through its recipes for Pineapple Chicken Fay Gel Lah…
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A Tale From Japan
“An Intimate Evening” to benefit The Neuropathy Association was held October 18 at Le Cirque. This potentially crippling and often misdiagnosed disorder “afflicts close to 20 million Americans and an estimated 300,000 New Yorkers” said TV anchor Chuck Scarborough, who shared the evening’s emcee spot with Pia Lindstrom, daughter of Ingrid Bergman. “It is true…
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Odd Man Out
He was strong and handsome, and he was the first born; but his mother, indifferent to all that, preferred his brother and viewed him, largely, as a dullard. When she talked with his brother, their conversations were so darting and subtle that his head hurt. He could not follow them and came to think that…
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November 12, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • Russian newspapers are looking for the root causes of the rash of pogroms that has occurred recently in the empire. The Russian journalists have concluded that the main reason for the pogroms is the wide availability of vodka. A short time ago, a number of small pogroms were perpetrated by groups…
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The Women We Know
They are the women we all know: A Florida bubbe battling with her headstrong granddaughter. A good Jewish girl looking for a nice Jewish husband. Three artists — a painter, a singer and a filmmaker — all questioning the assumptions of their faith. An old woman, a Russian immigrant, rediscovering her youth; another, alone in…
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