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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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…
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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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Israeli Expats Explore the Fatherland And Its Lingering Guilt Complex
Roi Talmor, 25, is better known as D.J. Poingi, a break-core (a school of techno) disc jockey who says he comes from IsraHell. He lives in what was East Berlin, in a walk-up he shares with a photographer friend. The apartment is small and unrenovated, a holdout in the hipster neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, where…
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Royal Romance and Medieval Mayhem The History of King Artus
Know that in the days of Uter Pendragon there was a great duke in the Kingdom of Logris called the Duke of Til Tomeil. He had an exceedingly beautiful wife named Lady Izerna. One day King Uter Pendragon ordered a very great tournament for all the knights of Logris by the city of Camelot. Each…
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Memorial Music To Stir the Soul
The arrival on record of an important new work is always welcome, but immense satisfaction is inevitably tinged by sadness with the CD release of John Adams’s “On the Transmigration of Souls,” a 25-minute work honoring the victims of the September 11 attacks. The piece was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and had its…
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Uneasy Reading: Books About Parenting Fall Flat
Newly expecting friends often ask me what pregnancy book they should buy. My answer always has been “none.” Because they are all vile. I suggest my friends sign up for weekly e-mails from babycenter.com instead, and search that superb site for answers to any questions that may come up. As for books, well, chas v’chalila,…
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Manuscripts Worth Millions
If you’re struggling to find a gift for that person who has everything and you’ve got a few hundred thousand dollars to spend, then Sotheby’s New York has the right auction for you. On October 27 and 28, the Montefiore Endowment at Ramsgate, England, will auction off a wide array of rare Hebrew manuscripts that…
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Looking for Doctor; Will Settle for Turkey Sandwich
There are no single men in New York, and everyone knows that. Everyone except my mother. To her, the city is filled with men waiting to make me their wife. I just needed a creative plan for finding them. “If you want to meet a doctor, eat in a hospital,” she advised. Any objections I…
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The Art of Forgiving
Come the High Holy Day season, we expect to see a great deal of discussion, in Jewish publications of various sorts, of teshuva (repentance), and particularly of what it means to be a ba’al teshuva (literally, a master of repentance). We might read something about Maimonides’s description of the ba’al teshuva — the one who,…
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From Opera to Yiddish Songs, Joy for the Ears
“It’s an amazing honor for us to be part of this, the most diverse and largest Jewish festival in the world,” Moishe Rosenfeld told the audience at the 92nd Street Y’s launching of “A Cantorial Celebration of Yiddish Art Song,” which he produced as part of the September 7-14 New York Jewish Music & Heritage…
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A Spider’s-Eye View Of Your Sukkah
From his window perch in the living room of the Shapiro household, Sammy Spider sees fall leaves, scampering squirrels and the family busily erecting a Sukkah. When Sammy — the star of the new story “Sammy Spider’s First Sukkot” (Lerner Pub Group), with text by Sylvia A. Rouss and whimsical cut-paper illustrations by Katherine Janus…
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