Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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Theater Jason Alexander lives out a lifelong dream, playing Tevye in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
'I wanted to do a piece that is proudly Semitic' said the Tony winner and ‘Seinfeld' star
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In An Era Of Faux News, Let’s Set The Record Straight On Vichy France
The State Versus The Jews By Laurent Joly Grasset, 368 pages, 20,90 € In 1994, the French historians Henry Rousso and Éric Conan published “Vichy, un Passé Qui ne Passe pas.” While titled “Vichy: The Ever-Present Past” in the excellent American translation, the phrase nevertheless has a slightly different resonance in the original French. The…
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Mussolini’s Willing Executioners: The Genocide Of Italy’s Jews
The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews in Italy By Simon Levis Sullam Princeton University Press, 208 pages, $26.95 In the cultural geography of the Shoah, Italy doesn’t take up much space. Our imagination turns instead to Germany and Poland. This is for good reason, of course, as the Shoah was a German initiative…
The Latest
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On J.D. Salinger’s 100th Birthday, His Not-So-Secret Jewish History
Celebrations of the American Jewish author J.D. Salinger’s 100th birthday on January 1 continue apace. A J. D. Salinger Boxed Set Centennial Edition has appeared and forthcoming are a new study by Sarah Graham and a paperback reissue of Thomas Beller’s anecdotal biography. The writer, who died in New Hampshire in 2010, will also be…
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How Judaism Can Survive Amid A Gazillion Contradictions
The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today By Jack Wertheimer Princeton University Press, 400 pages, $29.95 In “The New American Judaism,” Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary and the author of “A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America,” draws on interviews with 200 rabbis, survey…
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A Carnival Ride Reimagining Of The Book Of Jeremiah
Muck: A Novel Dror Burstein Translated from the Hebrew by Gabriel Levin Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 400 pages, $27 Prophets don’t really see the future. What they see all too clearly is the present. That’s why prophecy is a lonely, thankless job. Think about the fate of the biblical Jeremiah. For about 40 years, he…
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Amos Oz and Jerusalem: A Complicated Relationship
For Amos Oz, the publication of his memoir “A Tale of Love and Darkness” was an electric moment. “As if I was digging in my own backyard, and I must have touched an underground cable; suddenly the lights in all of the windows began to flash,” he told me in 2011. The book, he said,…
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Amos Oz, Remembered By Those Who Knew Him
Amos Oz was enormously influential, a literary giant whose work helped shape his fledgling country, Israel. But, Jessica Cohen says, he was also kind. “Even though he was famous, an internationally renowned author and intellectual, when you sat and talked with him in his living room it was just like talking with a nice guy,”…
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In 1974, Amos Oz Wasn’t World-Famous — But He Was Already A Political Rebel
Editor’s note: Amos Oz died on December 28, 2018. To commemorate his life, we revisited this glimpse of Oz before he became a figure of international renown, originally published by the Forverts on December 4, 1974. Last week at the 92nd St. Y in Manhattan a young and famous writer from Israel — Amos Oz…
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Amos Oz’s Last Interview: ‘Israel Is A Flawed Dream Come True’
Editor’s note: Amos Oz passed away on December 28, 2018 at the age of 79. The Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff spoke with him by phone a month before his death. The following interview was one of Oz’s last. Amos Oz, arguably Israel’s most celebrated author, dedicated his most recent book, “Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided…
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Amos Oz, On Himself
A Tale of Love and Darkness By Amos Oz Harcourt, 544 pages, $26. ——— Since 1968, when his novel “My Michael” — exquisitely narrated by a despairing young wife in Jerusalem — mesmerized thousands of readers, Amos Oz has been recognized as one of Israel’s most gifted and prolific authors. He has produced 22 books…
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Amos Oz Looks Forward — and Back
Literature was once more at the forefront of Israel’s national conversation when I met Amos Oz during the first week of January. The Education Ministry had decided to remove Dorit Rabinyan’s novel “Borderlife” from the national curriculum, on the basis that an Israeli-Palestinian love story would confuse young people’s sense of identity. Print sales skyrocketed….
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