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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The New New-world Voice
Twenty-seven years ago, Irving Howe offered a sad prediction — now labeled by literary scholars the “Howe Doctrine” — about the fate of Jewish American creative expression. In the Kaddish-like introduction to his 1977 anthology of Jewish American short stories, Howe argued that “the post-immigrant Jewish experience” was exhausted, “its usability for the making of…
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An Enchanting Lesson
It was a disconcerting thought, a wake-up call that interrupted my reverie as I thought fondly back on four years of teaching second-grade Hebrew school. I realized with a start that the students I’d taught my first year were becoming bar and bat mitzvah this year. They had learned the trope, the system of diacritical…
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PSALM 151
“Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.” So wrote Basho, the great 17th-century haiku master. The master meant that poetry need not be useful in any obvious sense. On the other hand, who needs a poem about snow in the middle of winter? Far better to have one now, when temperatures…
The Latest
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… And the Most Important
June is upon us and with it, wedding preparations are in full swing: last minute fittings; anxious consultations with the clergy or other officiants; continual emendations to the seating chart; and, perhaps most significantly, a seemingly endless stream of conversations with the caterer — arguably the person of the hour. When it comes to staging…
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The Bride, the Groom, the Rabbi…
An Excerpt From ‘Clearing the Aisle, by Karen Schwartz (Downtown Press) * * *| Any lingering doubts I may have had about the Gershons’ rabbi had started to fade when he’d suggested we meet over lunch at Barney Greengrass. “I can’t be in New York and not eat there,” he said, “so this way, I’ll…
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Is This Too Much To Expect?
Zechariah 3:1-4, in the Haftarah to this week’s portion, reads: And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said unto Satan: “… is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was…
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The Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards
On June 7, The National Foundation for Jewish Culture Presents the 15th annual Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards in the Arts. Here are the winners: PATRON OF THE ARTS: Daryl Roth A producer of five Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Roth’s current productions include “Anna in the Tropics” and “Caroline, or Change” the latter by Tony Kushner and…
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At YIVO, Honoring Those Who Champion Mameloshn
Lolle Boettcher of St. Louis and the Moriah School of Englewood, N.J., were honored with the Janusz Korczak Teaching Award at the May 13 dinner of the American Friends of The Ghetto Fighters’ Museum in Israel. Amy Miller, board president, touted the museum as “the world’s only memorial studying resistance.” Its International Book-Sharing Project, created…
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Saving Private Grossman
Forward Forum When the film “Saving Private Ryan” came out a couple of years back, I thought that it might be a way to get my father-in-law to talk about his experience at Omaha Beach. So I asked him whether the opening scene in the movie, with its horrific portrayal of the first hours of…
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‘Killer Coke’ Campaign Targets UJA Honoree on Colombia Rights
Attendees at a United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York dinner next week will have to pass through a picket line on their way inside. The black-tie dinner, set to honor the president and chief operating officer of the Coca-Cola Company, Steven Heyer, has become the subject of a protest by the Campaign to Stop Killer…
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Rabbinical Turf Fight in Lithuania Spills From Shul Onto Front Pages
A months-long battle between two rabbis in Lithuania turned violent last week as the pair scuffled during the Jewish harvest festival of Shavuot. As with most matters involving their feud, both Rabbi Sholom Krinsky and Rabbi Chaim Burshtein are claiming the high road and are unable to agree on the basic facts of the situation….
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