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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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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To Paradise and Back
Simhat Torah follows the seventh day of Sukkot and is a day of rejoicing. On Simhat Torah, the year-long reading of the Torah comes to an end with the last few verses of the Book of Deuteronomy and starts again with the first verses of the Book of Genesis. The scrolls of the Torah are…
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Israel Uncorks World-class Wines
By ordinary standards, the Roman-era grape press found a couple of years ago in the tilled red earth on the outskirts of Kibbutz Netiv HaLamed Heh is not enormously newsworthy. It is just another ruin found in a country in which road workers and homebuilders know that any given square foot of excavation probably could…
The Latest
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Passion Fruit, Indeed: One Man’s Etrog Obsession
It looks like a lemon, feels like a lemon and kind of smells like a lemon. But an etrog is not a lemon. In fact, it takes a lot to grow an etrog, which is the fruit of the citron tree and one of the four species used on the festival of Sukkot. The others…
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From A to Zorn: Musical Tributes To History
“Great Jewish Artists Perform Great Jewish Composers,” the September 7 concert at the 92nd Street Y, launched the weeklong New York Jewish Music & Heritage Festival celebrating the 350th anniversary of Jews in America. Festival founder and director Michael Dorf attributed the festival’s success to, among others: UJA-Federation’s John Ruskay, the Jewish Community Relations Council’s…
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Pop Music for the Yom Kippur Set
Contemporary music and the Yom Kippur service might sound as though they go together like french fries and ice cream. But after enough hours on an empty stomach, unusual combinations start to grow on us. And after some time with “TekiYah,” the new CD of High Holy Days music from New York City’s Congregation B’nai…
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Yom Kippur
The world is filled with mavens. Diminutive Dr. Ruth is the world’s foremost sex maven. Isaac Mizrahi is a fashion maven. Donald Trump is a business maven. Thomas Friedman is a political maven. And with the recent publication of his timely new book, “On Apology” (Oxford University Press), which is based on the study of…
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September 17, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • Rosa Rosenthal, whose husband managed to disappear after she gave birth, can’t find a job that will allow her to take her newborn with her. With no job, Rosenthal has no money to feed either herself or her baby. Not knowing what else to do, she took out an advertisement to…
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Ladino and Yiddish –– Those Tools of Modernity
Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires By Sarah Abrevaya Stein Indiana University Press, 310 pages, $75 —– I’m thrilled to review this book by Sarah Abrevaya Stein, an assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, but not because it is well written. It is unnervingly…
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Fatalism and Humor in Israeli Fiction
Uncle Peretz Takes Off: Short Stories By Yaakov Shabtai Translated From the Hebrew by Dalia Bilu Overlook Duckworth, 239 pages, $24.95. * * *| The Israeli author Yaakov Shabtai, who died in 1981, wrote several morbidly memorable first sentences. “Goldman’s father died on the first of April, whereas Goldman himself committed suicide on the first…
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On the Small Screen, Kitsch and a Witch
That pesky, mysterious Lilith. As the mythical first wife of Adam who, as his equal, refused to lie beneath him, she’s been a source of wonder and inspiration for thousands of years. Demonic references in the Talmud and Kabbalist texts have led many to fear her; more recently, she’s been worshipped as a goddess and…
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