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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Why I Fell Out of Love With Kabbalah
This is not a review of the new anthology by Daniel Horwitz, “A Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism Reader”; it’s about something I realized when I saw the book on my editor’s bookshelf — that I’m not in love with Kabbalah anymore. Horwitz’s anthology, part of a series from the Jewish Publication Society, is only somewhat…
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How Sayed Kashua Became an Outsider in Israel — and in America
Sayed Kashua is a man of many contradictions. He’s Arab, but writes only in Hebrew (at age 14, he left his village to attend a boarding school for gifted students in Jerusalem). He’s a hugely successful writer in Israel — he’s written three novels, the popular sitcom “Arab Labor,” a weekly column in Haaretz, and…
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Peter Shaffer, Producer of ‘Equus’ and ‘Amadeus,’ Dies at 92
The award-winning British playwright Sir Peter Shaffer, best known for penning “Amadeus” and “Equus,” died Monday in County Cork, Ireland, of pneumonia and age-related issues, his long-time agent said. He was 90. Shaffer was surrounded by friends and family at the time of his death, just a few weeks after his 90th birthday, agent Dennis…
The Latest
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Why Barbra Streisand Should Think Twice About Starring in ‘Gypsy’
Just because Barbra can do something does not mean that Barbra should do it. The recent news that long-percolating plans for Streisand to star in a film of the Jule Styne musical “Gypsy” will occur has thrilled millions of fans. Not long ago, Barry Levinson shepherded the volcanic Al Pacino through two monstrous TV film…
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After Havdalah, a Sense of Exile
I remember, when I was 6 or 7 years old, a ritual: Immediately after Havdalah my mother would run over to the phone — a yellow rotary phone embedded in the kitchen wall, to call her parents. It was 1970 or thereabouts. We lived in Montreal then, and it was a long-distance call to New…
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The Secret Jewish History of Muhammad Ali
The boxer Muhammad Ali, who died on June 3 at the age of 74, has been accused of having “frequently clashed with the Jewish people.” The truth is more complex. The Louisville-born heavyweight champ was raised a Baptist, but joined the Nation of Islam in 1964, abandoning his birth name of Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr….
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Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Where the Bird Sings Best By Alejandro Jodorowsky, translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam Restless Books, 416 pages, $27.99 Albina and the Dog-Men By Alejandro Jodorowsky, translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam Restless Books, 224 pages, $15.99 In Alejandro Jodorowsky’s recently translated autobiographical novel “Where the Bird Sings Best,” his maternal great-grandmother Sara…
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Music and Pomegranates Merge at Greater Chicago Jewish Festival
In 1980 Skokie, Ill. lawyer Michael Lorge and about 20 of his friends were trying to create a positive Jewish community response for what they saw as an identity in trouble. Though Israel and Egypt had established diplomatic relations in January, only three months later five Palestinian Arabs from the Iraqi-backed Arab Liberation Front raided…
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Nathan Englander’s Masterful Parable of Occupation
This Month Anne Reads: “Sister Hills” by Nathan Englander, from his collection of short stories “What we Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.” This is a heart-flipping horror story about us, about everything Jews hold dear. It is a prophesy in the Amos and Jeremiah sense, and it is a diagnosis in the…
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Forward Looking Back
Mazel Tov: Jean Dubinsky, daughter of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union President, marries Air Force veteran Shelley Appleton. The couple were married in the presence of their families at a ceremony performed by Dr. Israel Goldstein (above right), rabbi of congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York. 1916 100 Years Ago According to columnist Moyshe…
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The Fate Sholem Aleichem Brought on Himself
Sholem Aleichem’s funeral was the largest New York City had ever seen. On May 15, 1916, more than 150,000 mourners accompanied the writer’s coffin from his home in the Bronx to the Ohab Tzedek synagogue in Harlem, down Fifth Avenue to the Lower East Side, and finally to the Mt. Nebo cemetery in Cyprus Hills,…
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כאָטש זי האָט מער ווי 50 יאָר געשפּילט אויף דער העברעיִשער בינע זאָגט זי, אַז שלום־עליכם קען זי נאָר שפּילן אויף ייִדיש.
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Fast Forward Bondi gunmen condemned ‘Zionist’ actions prior to attack and threw bombs that failed to detonate, police say
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Fast Forward Toronto men, including 1 linked to ISIS, charged with targeting Jewish women for assault
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Music How hundreds of forgotten klezmer tunes have been rescued from oblivion
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