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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Poverty Is a ‘Jewish’ Issue
One year ago, I had the opportunity to meet with President Bush, along with 15 other rabbis, just a few days before Yom Kippur. Each of us was offered the opportunity to raise a question with the president. I chose to speak about the issue of poverty, in particular the concern for low-income parents who…
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Damascus Whodunnit
TEL AVIV — In his lifetime, Iz a-Din al-Sheikh Khalil’s name was known only to the top Hamas experts within the Israeli and Western intelligence communities. Though he was a senior political-military operative, he wasn’t one of the recognized faces of the Palestinian movement, like Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Abd al-Aziz Rantisi or Khaled Mashal. That…
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Showdown Set for Communal Debate Over Sharon’s Gaza Withdrawal Plan
WASHINGTON — Under pressure from one of its most powerful members, a key Jewish communal body is preparing to consider endorsing the disengagement plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The issue is to be debated at an upcoming October 14 meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the conference’s executive…
The Latest
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Gridiron Goliath Breaks Fast With Big Game, Nimble Timing
The sunset that brought Yom Kippur to an end came in the midst of a University of Wisconsin football game in front of 82,179 fans in which Matt Bernstein led his team to victory over Penn State by running 123 yards. Bernstein decided to play on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, but he…
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A City’s Renewal Fails To Dim Lure of Suburbs
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Across a highway from the Hawthorne Plaza mall, the largest Jewish congregation in Kansas City’s metropolitan area has recently found a new home next to grassy fields of chirping cicadas. After its historic synagogue in the city was demolished last September, B’nai Jehudah became the latest, and nearly the last, congregation…
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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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