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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California Dreaming: When Boundaries Are Emotional
The year is 1979, and eighth grader Jill Wasserstrom lives in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood. A budding leftist, she spends Friday nights eagerly preparing to defend the Ayatollah Khomeini in her social studies class, or writing a subversive bat mitzvah speech that proclaims the Torah an “outdated, mythological document.” Meanwhile, her older sister, Michelle,…
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A Bad Precedent
Two men, Moses and Aaron, stand on a hill outside Kadesh in the Negev. Moses is bent with the weight of responsibility and knowledge. They look northward toward Canaan. Moses: I’m telling you, this time He’s really angry. Aaron: What else is new? About what this time? Moses: The spies. Aaron: He sent them. Moses:…
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Notes on Camp
The buzzword in Jewish circles these days is “continuity”: What turns Jewish children into actively Jewish adults? Sociologists usually point to parents and schools as the two prime agents of socialization. And yet, in the Jewish community, these agents don’t seem to be doing their jobs. A report released last month by the National Study…
The Latest
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The Stars Toast Elie Wiesel on His 75th
Tom Brokaw, master of ceremonies at the Anti-Defamation League’s 75th birthday celebration gala for Elie Wiesel, got the simkha off to a memorable start by declaring: “I’m your shabbes goy.” Among the more than 700 black-tie Wiesel fans were Lily Safra, Richard Ben-Veniste, Ted Koppel, Cynthia Ozick, Kati Marton, George Schwab, General Wesley Clark, and…
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June 11, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • On a secluded farm in New Jersey, well-known Yiddish theater actor Morris Finkel shot and killed his wife, singer Emma Finkel, and then turned the gun on himself. Both Finkels were much beloved, and the entire Yiddish theater community has been deeply saddened by the tragedy. “The news simply took my…
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Anne Frank Forever
Anne Frank died in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. June 12, 2004, would have been her 75th birthday. When I first read Anne Frank’s diary I was not yet 13 years old. Jewish tradition dictated that I was on the verge of adulthood, but I knew I had a long way to…
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The Stressful, Dreary Life With a Very Small Stranger
Why is it so dang hard for women to tell the truth about new motherhood? Sure, there’s nothing like a fragrant-headed, milk-drunk baby draped over your shoulder like lichen. But when newborns are not happily gorked to the gills, they have two modes: screaming and boring. They are far less interactive than Super Nintendo. Early…
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Does Modern Orthodoxy Have a Future?
Orthodoxy Awakens: The Belkin Era and Yeshiva University By Victor B. Geller Urim Publications, 295 pages, $26.95. * * *| An American Orthodox Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Boston’s Maimonides School By Seth Farber Brandeis University Press, 228 pages, $34.95. * * *| Even in the midst of unprecedented growth of its institutions, Modern…
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U.S. Groups Warn Israel On Failure To Pull Out
WASHINGTON — American Jewish communal leaders are warning Prime Minister Sharon that a failure to implement his Gaza pullout plan could jeopardize Jerusalem’s relations with the Bush administration. Sharon and members of his Cabinet received this blunt assessment last week from media mogul and real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman, the immediate past chairman of the…
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Intel Agencies Fear Iran Used Chalabi To Lure U.S. Into Iraq
American intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating the possibility that Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile leader, was used by Iranian intelligence to feed Washington false information on Iraq, with the goal of tricking America into deposing Saddam Hussein, Iran’s archenemy, several intelligence sources have confirmed. Chalabi, once the darling of the Bush administration’s…
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June 4, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • In the wake of pogroms and in light of numerous threats of new ones, Jews in shtetls are beginning to arm themselves. When Jewish residents of the shtetl of Talatshin, in the Moghilev province, caught wind of a pogrom being planned against them, they sent out announcements to neighboring Borisov, as…
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