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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U.S. Refraining From Criticism Of Gaza Foray
WASHINGTON — With their countries mounting parallel military offensives against terrorist strongholds in Iraq and Gaza, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a high-powered White House meeting Monday. Moments after the talks, reporters asked Netanyahu if Rice had urged Israel to demonstrate restraint during its operation in Gaza. The…
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Some Holiday: Iraq Troops Lack Rabbis, Safe Passage to Services
Specialist Dan Freedman woke up at 0300 hours — 3 a.m. —September 15. It was dark and he was tired, but he was determined to get from his base at Camp Victory to Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Palace in the capital. He put on his uniform, grabbed his M-16 and went looking for his two…
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Mel Gibson and the Demise Of Enlightened Skepticism
Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was out on video last week, and I still haven’t seen it. I probably never will, and judging by the surge in its worldwide box office receipts, I may prove to be the only such soul on God’s good earth. This is not a boycott. It’s just that…
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At Christian Rally for Israel, Robertson Pitches ‘Messiah’
JERUSALEM — With 4,000 Christian guests from 70 countries set to participate, the city’s annual Sukkot march was billed as the centerpiece of a weeklong show of evangelical support for Israel. But then televangelist and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson opened his mouth and uncorked a can of theological worms guaranteed to make many…
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October 1, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • An army of lawyers has descended onto the Lower East Side to untie the tangled knot of complaints regarding who will receive recently deceased real estate magnate Jacob Cohen’s million-dollar estate. Esther Cohen, daughter of whom she calls the “original” Harris Cohen of Baxter Street, as well as second wife and…
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Fantasies of a Fascist America
The Plot Against America” is Philip Roth’s fantasy of a fascist America. Although it arguably has as much to do with contemporary America as its imaginary 1940-42 setting, Roth’s new book also belongs to a particular tradition of counterfactual history. In some respects, “The Plot Against America” recalls Sinclair Lewis’s cautionary “It Can’t Happen Here,”…
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A Home for Bible Translators
Tucked in the hillsides of the Jerusalem suburb of Mevaseret Zion is what could be your average dormitory. The spacious villa includes 10 rooms — a common dining area, several bedrooms and a large library with three computers hooked up to the Internet. And there are also students, though of a slightly unusual kind. Welcome…
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Department Store Lore: A History
Okay, I’ll admit it: I love to shop, especially in tony department stores like Bergdorf Goodman, that Fifth Avenue emporium of luxe whose 100th anniversary is right around the corner. In search of visual pleasure, not to mention the joys of ownership, I delight in making my way past vitrine after vitrine, one more glorious…
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Roth’s Fanfare for the Common Man
The Plot Against America By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Company, 400 pages, $26. —— Knitting domains together — domestic and global, story and back-story — always has been iffy for Philip Roth. He understands life best in the lower case — inside the family, the marriage, the disheveled heart, the desperate moment. His wide-angle work…
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Life in the Unholy Holy Land
My partner, who went to school in Israel during the 1950s, is fond of recalling the fact that some 28 different languages were spoken by the 42 children in his third grade class. Even today, holding up a mirror to Israeli society produces a fragmented image of rare complexity, showing a culture multiply divided between…
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An Indie Label Strikes Gold
Two years ago, Michael Caplan couldn’t wait to be fired. He was working as an executive vice president at Sony Music, where he discovered acts like Living Colour, G. Love and Ginuwine. But he had long been dismayed by the lack of love for actual music in the record business, a problem he watched grow…
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