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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A Shanda in Shpittsburgh!
What makes a hero? Is it his cape or his capabilities? Or is it simply enough to “do good,” to help those around you in times of need? As adults, we might not remember the significance of these questions, but for a child, they are paramount. In answer to the call, Agent Emes has returned…
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Family Honor in Distress
Jacob has settled down at last. Prosperous in middle age, blessed with four wives and 12 sons, he has escaped from his exploitive father-in-law, made peace with his estranged brother and returned to his native land, the land the Almighty promised to him and his descendants. A herdsman, Jacob has pitched his tents and set…
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Looking Back November 26, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • Mortimer L. Schiff, son of well-known Jewish banker Jacob Schiff, was arrested Sunday night for excessive speeding in a car on Fifth Avenue. Young Mortimer was furious that the arresting officer brought him down to the station and threatened to fix him good. Schiff also threatened the precinct’s sergeant in the…
The Latest
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Remembering A ‘Happy Jewish Spirit’
“In 1993, when we first established Jewish Life Network, we sought to create a foundation that would help catalyze a renaissance in the non-Orthodox Jewish World,” Michael Steinhardt told the mostly youthful audience at the October 28 Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y’s memorial concert to “Celebrate the Life of Jonathan Joseph (‘J.J.’) Greenberg.”…
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See Dick. See Dick Kvell. Kvell, Dick, Kvell.
Yiddish With Dick and Jane By Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman Little, Brown, 112 pages, $14.95. —— The Dick and Jane primers left an indelible imprint on generations of Americans — myself among them — who first experienced reading inside their pages. Dick and his sister, Jane, epitomized the fresh-faced, immaculate and well-behaved offspring of…
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The Buddha From Brooklyn A Lama Talks About Enlightenment… With a Yiddish Twang
You think you know the story: A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, N.Y., goes off to India for several years, meditating on a mountaintop. He transforms himself into a new person, changing his name from Jeff Miller to Surya Das, abandoning his jeans for saffron robes, and now he spends all day expounding sweetly on peace…
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Lighting a Yahrzeit Candle, And Cursing the Darkness
‘Don’t forget you need to light the candle,” my mother responded when I asked her how she was planning on coping come Monday. I wanted to know what she was going to do, how she was going to spend the day. I was concerned about her — but I was also feeling completely at a…
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Film Examines Court Jews Who Dominated Basketball
In Miami there are men whose memories burn with images of athletic glory long-relegated to private collections of black-and-white news reels — images of swooping majestic passes back and forth, baskets swishing with grace, running up and down a court of giants. These men possess the story of how Jewish Americans, most of them the…
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Numbers Game: Red Sox Win, Kerry Whiffs
George W. Bush played a hunch in the late winter of 2003. Against the advice of many intelligence, military and diplomatic experts, the president ordered the invasion of Iraq, convinced that the United States would uncover weapons of mass destruction, be welcomed by the native population and transform the country into a democracy. Seven months…
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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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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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