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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When a Long-Legged Jewish Girl Shamed Hitler
In 1931, when Germany was awarded the 1936 Olympics, Adolf Hitler hadn’t yet come to power. Two years later, after he became chancellor, he embraced the Olympic Games as an opportunity to show off his Aryan nation to the world. He faced one serious obstacle: himself. If word got out about Hitler’s discriminatory laws and…
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Tales of the Masters
God in All Moments: Mystical & Practical Spiritual Wisdom From Hasidic Masters Edited & Translated by Or Rose With Ebn D. Leader Jewish Lights, 163 pages, $16.95. —- Hasidic Tales: Annotated and Explained Translation and Annotation B y Rabbi Rami Shapiro SkyLight Paths, 193 pages, $16.95. —- If you’ve seen “The Chosen,” or just tried…
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#2!
So Josie’s getting a sister in October. We’re thrilled, if still a bit discombobulated. Suffice it to say that, compared to the laborious overland journey required to make Josie (you remember we called it the Bataan Sex March), this pregnancy happened, um, instantly. Back in January, on the way back from the corner bodega, a…
The Latest
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Painterly and Scholarly: Archie Rand Satisfies Purists of All Kinds
Archie Rand’s challenging, hybrid artwork has long been difficult to categorize. As a progressive painter who frequently incorporates Jewish themes and sacred texts into his canvases, Rand has faced criticism from purists in both the religious and avant-garde communities. His work, however, is probably best understood as a series of paintings that consistently make use…
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This Tale of Mystery Begins With a Corpse –– But Ends With a Twist
Lev Raphael’s latest novel, “The German Money,” is a Book Sense 76 pick. The Outcast Dove By Sharan Newman Forge, 429 pp, $25.95. —- In mysteries it’s a cliché to introduce a corpse on the first page. In her new book, Sharan Newman seems to drearily fulfill that expectation, offering us a dead body in…
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Doing It for Themselves: Synagogue Sisterhoods Come Into the Future
At synagogues across the country, the women who have been filling the ranks of sisterhoods and doing the bulk of volunteering have been looking behind themselves and seeing… no one. These older women have raised millions of dollars and organized countless events. Yet the younger women around them, even those who attend services regularly, simply…
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A Mega Bar Mitzvah for Actor Fyvush Finkel
The June 21 tribute to Yiddish-English stage, film and TV star Fyvush Finkel — hosted by The Yiddish Artists & Friends Actors Club and The Yiddish Theatrical Alliance at the Lincoln Square Synagogue — was akin to a mega bar mitzvah. As the 350 guests mingled, noshed and wished 81-year-old Finkel nor oyf simkhas (“only…
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Religion in the New World
in an intensive manner that was unknown to their parents earlier in the century. The Havurah movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a positive response to these developments, and the appearance of what is today called “Jewish renewal” owes its origins to those years. The Reconstructionist movement opened the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1969,…
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Settling in Transjordan
Imagine yourself as the director of a play or film with Numbers 32 as your script. What instructions do you give to the actors playing the men of the tribes of Reuven and Gad as they rehearse the scene in which they inform Moses of their desire to settle in Transjordan, short of the final…
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First Fruit
‘Heartburn — raisins I don’t eat. Take mine.” Jed offers his packet of raisins to the young man in the window seat beside him. “Thanks,” Ron says, “I’m not really hungry.” “Who knows when we’ll get lunch? It’s a long flight. I’m Jed, by the way.” “No, thanks, maybe later.” The two men shake hands….
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Strange Bedfellows of Art and Politics
“I have never hated the individual Jew — yourself I have cherished as a friend, but you will know that I speak in all honesty when I say that I have loved you, not because of your race but in spite of it.” — Martin Schulse in a letter to his friend and business partner,…
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