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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Unmasking the Invisible Jews of Budapest
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Clothes make the man. Invisible people have little or no influence on society.” Yet Hungarian Jews, because they assimilated into society to the point that most overt Jewish qualities vanished, made a significant cultural impact. This is one thesis of a new book, “The Invisible Jewish Budapest”. Its author, Mary Gluck,…
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8 Things You’ll Need To Know If You’re a Jew Living in Exile
I grew up in Kansas, with parents from Oklahoma, and then went to college in Louisiana before moving to New York, the mystical land my Grandpa Herb talked about. He grew up in Brooklyn, where everyone was Jewish, he told me as I colored my Rudolph Christmas ornament for class. During the time I lived…
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Kickstarter Helped This Rabbi Return to Her Roots
Like so many American Jews, my greenhorn ancestors were peddlers and itinerant tradesmen. They traveled town to town, house to house, hawking their wares. On my mother’s side, one infamous cousin took odd jobs, moving westward until he settled his family on a ranch in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I can feel the blisters on his feet,…
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Why ‘Night’ Will Be Remembered as Elie Wiesel’s Greatest Work
The Romanian-born Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel, who died on July 2 at age 87, will be remembered for many accomplishments. Above all, his memoir “Night.” (1960) Translated from a 1955 French edition — an earlier, longer Yiddish memoir with differences in substance and style was also published — “Night” focuses on the stench, torture,…
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Elie Wiesel’s Wrenching Lost Version of ‘Night’ Was Scathing Indictment of God and Fellow Jews
The 150-page work that historian Dr. Joel Rappel pulls off the shelves of his vast library is a difficult document to read. It’s not the handwriting that makes the task hard – it’s actually quite legible. The content – a searing indictment against God and anyone who believed in him during the Holocaust – is…
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Excerpts From Elie Wiesel’s Greatest Literary Works
The following are excerpts from some of the most significant works of Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author, who has died at 87. “NIGHT” “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive…
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For Diane Arbus, Photography Was Like Sexual Conquest
Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer By Arthur Lubow Ecco, 752 pages, $35 Arthur Lubow writes that he has tried to tell the story of the photographer Diane Arbus with “the detail and clarity that she prized.” The portrait that emerges in “Diane Arbus,” the first major biography since Patricia Bosworth’s in 1984 is of…
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Ron Suskind’s Family Story of Autism Will Make You Weep
A little over twenty years ago, Ron Suskind seemed to be in a very good place. He looked forward to going to work every day. A reporter on the rise for the Wall Street Journal, he’d just been promoted to senior national affairs writer. Reporting wasn’t “just what I did, but it was an expression…
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I Saw the Lubavitcher Rebbe Go From Religious Icon to New Age Cliché
I’m at the New York Public Library on a Monday afternoon for an event honoring the seventh and last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. I was invited by a friend who works for Chabad, and I’m writing a book about the Rebbe, so naturally I’m curious. News of the gathering has been floating around for…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago Summer Getaway During the winter, Second Avenue is packed full with Yiddish actors. But where do these actors play in the summer heat? The truth is that most of these actors can currently be found on “roof gardens” playing pinochle and poker. Those actors who aren’t playing on the roof gardens…
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What Did Baseball Scouts Really Have To Say About Sandy Koufax?
If Sandy Koufax was a young prospect today, the teams would have reams of scouting data on him leading up to the MLB Draft Thursday. But it wasn’t that way in the 1950s when Koufax was pitching at the University of Cincinnati. In fact, there wasn’t even a draft back then. Thankfully, though, we do…
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