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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Looking Back October 10, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • According to the Bund’s latest reports, three revolutionaries were put on trial for taking part in an anti-government demonstration in Rostov. The first day of the trial, more than 700 demonstrators arrived to protest. On their way to the courthouse, they were confronted by a group of Cossacks and a number…
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October 3, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • More reports on the pogrom in Homel are filtering in, mostly by way of private letters, although no clear estimates are available on the number of dead and injured. One letter, sent to a resident of Essex Street, includes the following details: “About 2,000 men armed with axes and iron bars…
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September 19, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • In the Bund’s latest report from the front lines of the coming revolution in Russia, one notable item is that the czarist police have tried to frighten the Jews of Kiev by informing them that revolutionary forces are planning to attack them on the first of May, the holiday for all…
The Latest
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At the Heart of Two Summer Operas, Romance Gone Bad
Romance gone bad lay at the heart of two operas — each part of a summer festival — one performed in Manhattan, the other upstate at Bard College. The Bard event, the first American staging of Leos Janacek’s “Osud” (“Fate”), and the first offering in Bard’s new SummerScape series, was notable because it inaugurated in…
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September 12, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • There was bound to be trouble between Shmuel Birnboym and Barnett Studnik. When Mrs. Studnik filed for divorce, her husband smelled something rotten. He figured she was no saint and concluded that Shmuel Birnboym put her up to it. Birnboym denied having anything to do with Mrs. Studnik and sued her…
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September 5, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • Theodor Herzl’s opening speech of the Zionist Congress was interrupted by delegate Rabinovitsh from Kiev, who yelled out in the middle of the speech that a moment of silence was not a sufficient manner with which to remember the victims of the Kishinev pogrom and that a rabbi should be brought…
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August 29, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • A massive split has occurred at the Zionist Congress in Basel as the entire Russian delegation walked out in protest. The Russian delegates, who make up nearly half of the entire congress, were furious at the executive committee’s decision to pursue the British offer of a colony for a Jewish settlement…
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August 22, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • In Bialystok, large numbers of young Jews, who were part of a march of 4,000 revolutionaries protesting the oppressive czarist regime, were attacked and imprisoned by the police and military agents. The police attacked the march as soon as it started. Even after the crowd dispersed, they continued to grab bystanders…
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‘Orphan Drugs’ Orphaned by Budget Cuts
Advocates for sufferers of rare diseases are working to ensure passage of newly introduced legislation that would counteract a recent administrative action they say deprives those with such maladies of vital medicines. The Medicare Patient Access to Drugs for Rare Diseases Act of 2003, introduced in the House of Representatives July 10, is intended to…
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Annual Guide to Jewish Genetic Diseases
The Forward presents this section to provide information on some of the more serious Jewish genetic diseases. There are about 20 “Ashkenazic diseases,” not counting the higher rates of at least four cancer-related genes. The diseases are more prevalent in the Eastern European Jewish population because of centuries of endogamy, literally, “marrying within.” ———– FAMILIAL…
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LOTS Sufferers Combat Ignorance as Well as Symptoms
When people find out Shirley Webb has late onset Tay-Sachs disease (LOTS), their reactions have ranged from “But you’re older than 5 years old!” to “Why are you alive?” Once, at work, someone saw her pull away from her desk in her wheelchair and exclaimed, “I didn’t know you were crippled!” At 66, Webb, a…
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