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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Bringing A Talmudic Sage Back To Life
RABBI AKIVA: SAGE OF THE TALMUD By Barry W. Holtz Yale University Press, 248 pages, $25 When I was a rabbinical student, my teacher, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, told me that when he was a college student he interviewed with the legendary Solomon Schechter to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary for rabbinical school. Schechter asked…
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Scott Turow’s New Book Takes On The Holocaust
‘I like my life, whatever I’m doing,” Scott Turow told me. “I get out of bed in the morning and I know that there’s something I’m going to look forward to, which is a blessed way of life.” Not so for his characters. “Someone pointed out to me that in all my books the characters…
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An Injured Athlete, A 70-Something Therapist, A Very Surprising Friendship
Filled with energy, even after a very long day, I hopped into his black Range Rover. Well, hopped is a bit of an exaggeration. At 5 feet 1 inch tall, I actually strained to reach the floorboards, but I was pleased to be with him once I settled into the passenger seat. The two of…
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7 Jewish Shows To Watch At The Tonys
(JTA) — Tonight is the biggest night of the year for theater lovers: It’s the Tony Awards. Unfortunately, our crystal ball is at the shop for repairs — so we can’t say with certainty who the winners will be. But there’s one thing that’s for sure: The past year has been a standout one for Jewish…
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Alex Katz’s Subway Drawings Are Quiet, Lonely — And Surreal
There are a few common descriptors (or criticisms, however you want to read it) for the work of Jewish-American artist Alex Katz – that it’s flat, cartoonish, pop-artish but not in the intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) vein of Warhol and his ilk. These criticism-descriptions all seem fair, but I can’t help but think that, when levied…
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Does New Scientific Discovery Undermine The Story Of The Garden Of Eden?
As has been reported by numerous new sources including The New York Times in the last couple of days, the idea that modern humans evolved in East Africa 200,000 years ago has been challenged by the discovery of 300,000-year-old remains in Jebel Irhoud, a Moroccan mine 100km west of Marrakesh. The extreme age of the…
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Yankel and Leah (Chapter 1)
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Yankel walked up the stairs in the dormitory, to light the Chanukah menorah. He lit a match but it blew out. He lit another one. Outside, a mix of rain and snow was falling. Inside, the ancient cast-iron radiator hissed. Chanukah was late this year – the end…
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How Allen Ginsberg Wrote The Poem Of A Generation
At some point, either in a high school English class or in a circle of semi-stoned friends — frankly, sometimes they’re one and the same (I’m from Colorado, sorry) — you’ve likely heard the famous opening line of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl:” “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,/starving hysterical naked,/dragging…
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This Dating Site Connects Jews Of Middle Eastern Descent
NEW YORK (JTA) — These days, there’s a dating site or app for just about any group you can imagine, from men with beards (and their admirers) to a farmers-only site. There’s even an app matches people based upon shared dislikes — as in “I saw you, too, hate paying extra for guacamole.” But one day it dawned upon Cynthia Shamash,…
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Film & TV Why Do White People Get Mad When We Call ‘Wonder Woman’ White?
When I wrote a piece at the Forward pointing out that Gal Gadot is white, I did not expect there to be a backlash. Gadot is, after all, playing a white character; she was clearly cast because people see her as white. The argument that she was a person of color was transparently made in…
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On Jerusalem Day, A Very Unerotic Carnival
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of Arnon Grunberg’s essay “An Unsuitable Place for Clowns” in the new anthology “Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation”(Harper Perennial). Grunberg, who was raised in Amsterdam as a member of the Zionist youth group Bnei Akiva, visited the West Bank through a tour with the…
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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