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 Terrible, Awful Novel Of Great Importance
Siegfried By Harry Mulisch, translated by Paul Vincent Viking Press, 180 pages, $22.95. ——- When galleys for the massive Stalin biography by Montefiore first made the rounds, I got hold of a copy for my father, thinking that the subject would interest him as a survivor of Auschwitz and a former Bundist. He’s read many,…
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July 23, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • More than 5,000 pushcart peddlers filled six halls on the Lower East Side to protest the new decree by Sanitation Commissioner Woodbury. The new law, which takes effect this week, no longer permits pushcart salesmen to stand with their wares in the street and instead forces them to stand under the…
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Buried Leads: A True Story
The purveyors of Jewish history have tended to be highly selective in what they choose to focus on. In America, for example, we almost completely ignore the mercantile achievements of the Sephardic Jews through the ages, as well as their role in the development of modern capitalism. And we rarely talk about Jewish involvement in…
The Latest
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Unafraid of Sentiment, Never Sentimental
Israeli painter Jan Rauchwerger is a small, reserved man of youthful appearance and countenance, his face round and unlined, his eyes inquisitive, a pale fuzz of hair covering his skull. As his wife, etcher Galit Rauch- werger, and two teenage boys move around his Jaffa house, he seems to take it all in through an…
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Good Dog! A Summer Taste Test
There’s no way to know this for sure, but I would suggest that kosher frankfurters first entered the wider American consciousness in the 1970s, thanks to, of all things, a TV commercial. In this commercial — for those of you who threw out your televisions in the 1960s — a man dressed as Uncle Sam…
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The Dark Patches of Your Life
Let’s start by taking some questions that any of you might have… (silence). Anyone?… (more silence). Okay, I’ll start. Let’s say I had this friend who had a tough week. And he/she was feeling a little down on him/herself. Is there anything in this week’s Torah portion, Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22, that might encourage me — I…
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Shemer Zemer Added to Tisha B’Av Liturgy
For many Israelis and American Jews, the recently deceased singer-songwriter Naomi Shemer always has been a religious figure of sorts, with an unmatched ability to move even the most secular listener with her spiritually uplifting songs about Israel and Zionism. Now Shemer’s status as a modern-day psalmist is official: Her most famous song, “Jerusalem of…
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Hot Diggity Dog: The Maven’s Faves
Abeles & Heymann Beef Frankfurters The overwhelming favorite — it beat the runner-up by nearly 30% on tasters’ scorecards — and the consensus choice. These franks have a beautifully balanced taste: mildly smoky, not overly salty (a common failing among the contenders), with no off flavors or unpleasant aftertaste. The skin crackles nicely upon grilling…
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The Beastie Boys Grow Up
The question posed by “To the 5 Boroughs” (Capitol), the sixth album by the Beastie Boys, is: Can irreverence and social-consciousness coexist? As the three rappers push 40 — Adam Yauch, aka MCA, is 39; Mike Diamond, aka Mike D, is 38, and Adam Horovitz, aka Adrock, is 37 — it was perhaps inevitable that…
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Honoring the President’s Mensch
“As a Jew I have found myself becoming angrier and angrier at the current times we face,” declared Kenneth Bialkin, chairman of the board of the America-Israel Friendship League at its July 1 lecture — “Agenda Setting in the Middle East: Media, the Third Party in the Conflict Between the Israelis and the Palestinians”— held…
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Doing It for Themselves: Synagogue Sisterhoods Come Into the Future
At synagogues across the country, the women who have been filling the ranks of sisterhoods and doing the bulk of volunteering have been looking behind themselves and seeing… no one. These older women have raised millions of dollars and organized countless events. Yet the younger women around them, even those who attend services regularly, simply…
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