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 Final Rush of Eloquence
Deuteronomy approaches its close this week, and with it Moses, that great leader, who had been so chary of speech in his youth, gathers himself into a final rush of eloquence that is both a full-scale poem or song and a summing up of the story thus far. He delivers it to the entire congregation…
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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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For Once in Your Life, Go Ahead: Make a Tsimmes!
Though it is mostly derived from German and the Slavic languages, Yiddish is written in Hebrew characters, which are notoriously tricky to transliterate into English. As evidence, we need cite but a couple of examples: the disputable bubbe-mayseh (bobeh-myseh? bube-maiseh? there is no end to the tale) and the unfortunate nebbish (which could, poor thing,…
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Reuniting Refugees Upstate
“I’ve just come back from the 60th reunion of the “Oswego Refugees,” an excited 93-year-old Ruth Gruber told me on the phone. Gruber (foreign correspondent, photographer, author of 14 books) was referring to the August 4-6 weekend at Oswego, N.Y., at which 38 of the nearly 1,000 refugees she shepherded August 4, 1944, to “Fort…
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The Choice We Confront
If I were asked to recite the Torah while standing on one leg, I would repeat the summary formulation to be found at the end of this week’s portion, Nitzavim/VaYelekh. While standing on one leg, I would say — conflating Deuteronomy 30:15 and 30:19 — that the essence of the Torah is this, in the…
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September 10, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • The judges in Galicia have a strange sense of justice. When a Jew and a gentile stood before a judge in a Galician shtetl and were found guilty of the same charge, disturbing the peace, the judge meted out two different sentences. The gentile received a fine of five kroner and…
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Sabra Madonna: Meet Israel’s Pop Diva
Sarit Hadad is focused on the wide screen in front of her, looking intently at the final production of her music video for “Rak Ata” (“Only You”). She has just returned from Romania, where the fast-paced, high-drama clip was shot. “This is MTV material,” declares one of her staff at the conclusion of the clip….
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Ozick Returns, Still Aflush With Ideas
Heir to the Glimmering World By Cynthia Ozick Houghton Mifflin, 310 pages, $25. * * *| Cynthia Ozick, the fiercely and fearsomely intelligent critic and novelist, has based her latest work of fiction on Winnie-the-Pooh. More precisely, the new book is inspired by the story of Christopher Robin Milne (1920-1996), whose father, A.A. Milne, wrote…
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Letting Loose the Golem on Society’s Dilemmas
It’s rare to come upon a book with a truly original idea — which makes it all the more important that the idea be clearly and convincingly argued. Take this book about the golem — not just Rabbi Loew’s famous clay warrior of Prague, but any created being, somewhere between human and inanimate, brought into…
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