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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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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Communal Bodies Split Over Federal Budget Talks
Two closely linked Jewish representative bodies have staked out opposing stances on the federal budget resolution adopted last week by the House of Representatives, reflecting what observers say is a growing tension between the two arms of the federated Jewish philanthropic system. The two organizations are United Jewish Communities, a national service agency representing the…
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Karaoke Without the Culpability
The best trends always come around again: Leg warmers grace the pages of Vogue, shag carpets line the floors of hipster apartments and — finally — shira betzibur is cool once more. Shira betzibur, which translates as “singing in public,” is an Israeli communal activity of passing out songsheets and singing Israeli songs together, usually…
The Latest
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May 28, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • New York City detectives are searching for 15-year-old Katy Garfinkel of East Harlem. Garfinkel disappeared two weeks ago. Her uncle, Paul Garfinkel, has been looking for her and just last week received information that placed the girl in a brothel on 30th Street. Garfinkel arrived at the brothel with two detectives,…
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More Tears by the Rivers of Babylon
It is impossible to compile an absolutely accurate list of the Jewish service personnel who have been killed in Iraq. The Defense Department no longer keeps statistics on the religion of its personnel. Moreover, Jewish chaplains observe a policy of strict confidentiality regarding the faith of service personnel and will neither confirm nor deny whether…
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The Man Who Couldn’t Escape Being Jewish
Raphael Soyer and the Search For Modern Jewish Art By Samantha Baskind North Carolina University Press, 280 pages, $39.95. * * *| For most of his long career, Raphael Soyer worked hard to avoid being called a “Jewish” artist. Soyer, who died in 1987 in his 88th year, styled himself a “New York painter,” a…
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It’s the Economy, Stupid! (and Morality and Patriotism and…. )
Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America By Robert Reich Knopf, 272 pages, $24. * * *| Robert Reich has played many roles: professor, writer, bureaucrat, labor secretary and political candidate. Now he is joining the ranks of celebrity-authors peddling punchy, polemic, liberal books for this active political season. His goal is to…
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As If There Weren’t Enough Jews in Hollywood Already…
This summer, Hollywood film figures David Sacks, David N. Weiss and Jason Venokur will be offering a three-week fellowship for young Jews interested in filmmaking. During the course of the August program, students will eat, sleep and dream Jewish life, hobnob with luminaries of Los Angeles’s film industry, and learn the nuts and bolts of…
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Up and Down, Over and Out
Both Beautiful and Bewildering, Naama Goldstein’s Style Is Undeniably Original The Place Will Comfort You By Naama Goldstein * * *| In her debut collection of short stories, “The Place Will Comfort You,” Naama Goldstein explores the emotional effects of displacement from American to Israeli culture and back again. As an epigraph and symbol for…
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Showing ‘Spirit,’ Going Red and Taking Time for Israel
“Most of us who have passed the 60-year mark are living proof of the advances made in medical research,” said Texas’s former governor, Ann Richards, at the May 4 “Spirit of Achievement” luncheon of the National Women’s Division of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Richards praised the college for its “pioneering research…
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Locks of Love
Throughout the term of his vow as Nazirite, no razor shall touch his head; it shall remain consecrated until the completion of his term as Nazirite of the Lord, the hair of his head being left to grow untrimmed. (Numbers 6:5) Before my 9-year-old-daughter, Anna, was conceived, I was filled with a biblical longing to…
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