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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October 22, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • British-Jewish writer Israel Zangwill is currently in New York for the purpose of convincing wealthy Jews to support his plan to settle Jews in East Africa. England has practically promised a land mass of 400 square miles for the Jews to colonize, but this area is so untamed that only wild…
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In New Trend, Adult Emigrés Seek Ritual Circumcision
Two years before emigrating from Ekaterinburg, Russia, in 1997, Leonid Marder and his wife, Tamara, began observing the Sabbath. After arriving in America, the retired couple gradually became more devout. But for some time, something didn’t feel quite right. Like many Russian émigrés who adopted Orthodox practices in America, Marder had to take the next…
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Make Room for Baby
We New Yorkers are givers. By choosing to live in apartments the size of veal pens, and paying so much in monthly rent or mortgage that we could afford an entire herd of veal, we give people who live elsewhere something to feel superior about. You’re welcome. Josie and her possibly-born-by-the-time-you-read-this sister will be sharing…
The Latest
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The Return
This is the second in a three-part series on the challenges faced in the United States by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. A year ago, Max Berlin was planning on becoming a journalist after graduating from Hunter College in New York City. A thoughtful young man who had emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine, in 1992,…
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Scholars From Around the Globe Toast Oz
In advance of the publication of his new memoir, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” Amos Oz and his writing will be the subject of a three-day conference, a joint venture by the University of Pennsylvania and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “Oz has just come out with one of the most important works written…
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Derrida | Wrestling With the Angel That Was Himself
Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint By Hélène Cixous Columbia University Press, 168 pages, $27.50 * * *| During the era of the Talmud, the period of the scholars known as the Amoraim (200-500 C.E.) was dedicated to the fleshing out of the sparse, cryptic pronouncements of their predecessors, the Tannaim. In…
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Second-line Living
New Orleans serenaded L. J. Goldstein.The brass band funerals and street parades, called second lines, that wind through the town of Treme, outside the French Quarter, were far from his comfortable Manhattan, N.Y., upbringing, but close to his heart. “I used to dream of moving to New Orleans,” Goldstein said. “I was drawn to the…
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New Books Blend Kabbalah, Psychotherapy and Self-Help
The Secret Life of God: Discovering the Divine Within You Rabbi David Aaron Shambhala, 192 pages, $21.95. * * *| Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing And Inner Wholeness Estelle Frankel Shambhala, 332 pages., $24.95. * * *| As everyone seems to know by now, Kabbalah has broken into the mainstream. Thanks to…
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The Privilege of Fiction
the israeli film festival, now in its 20th year, is just one chance that new yorkers have to glimpse the new israeli cinema, which continues to make inroads here despite the region’s political and economic upheavals. recent, critically admired commercial releases of the past year include ra’anan alexandrowicz’s biting satire, “james’ journey to jerusalem” —…
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Our Evil Imaginations
The story of the Flood is preceded and followed by unkind remarks of God on the nature of human imagination. In Genesis 6:5, at the end of last week’s portion, we are told: And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of…
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The Devil Maid Me Do It
The plot is simple, even seductively coy, but it reverberates into the year ahead. In Isaac Bashevis Singer’s only Yiddish play, “Devil’s Play,” it seems the devil is bored and is looking for a little fun with an easy victim. He settles on a remote shtetl, Frampol, where he finds a happily married older couple,…
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