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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I.L. Peretz’s Bitter Critique of Passivity
This month, Anne reads “Bontche Shweig,” by Isaac Loeb Peretz (1852-1915) Did the Enlightenment come to the Jewish world like a thunderclap? Like a mist drifting in? Like an alarm clock penetrating a deep sleep? It doesn’t matter. It came, and with it a writer who could stand outside and inside at the same time….
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Orthodox Beatboxers Cut From ‘America’s Got Talent’
Two Orthodox Jewish beatboxers failed to advance on “America’s Got Talent” after wowing the judges in the initial round of the TV competition. Ilan Swartz-Brownstein and Josh Leviton, both of Manhattan, did not survive in the “Judge Cuts” episode that aired Tuesday night, The Oregonian reported. The show showed a brief segment of their performance….
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Remembering Garry Marshall, the Jewiest Non-Jew in Hollywood
(JTA) — If there were a competition for the most Jewish-seeming non-Jew, the late Garry Marshall would have topped the podium (or sat on the bimah). The director, writer and actor, who died Tuesday at age 81, was so often mistaken for a Jew that the misconception was mentioned in a number of his obituaries….
The Latest
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5 Jewish things about the moon
Since 1969 — when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the moon — six missions have successfully landed men on the moon, though since 1972 the only human presence on the moon has been the remotely controlled actions of rovers and small orbiting spacecraft. In honor of National…
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Why Are the Chinese So Obsessed With the Jews?
In China today, shoppers snap up self-help books about how be smart, rich, and have successful children supposedly by imitating Jews. At least ten universities in China offer Jewish Studies programs. This popularity is in spite of, or due to, the fact that there are almost no Jews in China. “The Image of Jews in…
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Towards a Kosher Definition of American Single Malt Whiskey
American whiskey producers are banding together to distill the definition of an American single malt whiskey. Scotch single malts are clearly and legally defined as whisky made from 100% malted barley that is the product of a single distillery, and aged in used wooden casks for at least three years. There are some more small…
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Punk’s Jewish Godfather Alan Vega Dies at 78
Punk pioneer Alan Vega of Suicide – whose pitch-black, electro-charged minimalism influenced musicians from Bruce Springsteen to U2 to The Arcade Fire – died this weekend at age 78. Born in 1938 as Boruch Alan Bormowitz in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Vega studied fine arts and physics at Brooklyn College. A chance meeting decades later with performer…
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Uri Geller and the Case of the Anti-Semitic Pokemon
Israeli impresario Uri Geller has claimed that extraterrestrials gave him the power to bend spoons with his mind. He also runs a humanitarian organization called International Friends of Magen David Adom (Red Star Of David). Sometime around 2000, kids started approaching Geller and asking him to autograph certain Pokemon cards. Apparently, there was a widespread…
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Why a Good, Close Shave Is Like a False Messiah
It was either a cheap two-blade Bic or a generic Gillette knock-off razor. Given the almost pathological thriftiness my family had, I assume it was probably the cheaper option, whichever it was. I recall that when I saw the wall of razors at the drug store offering multiple blades and clean shaves, I realized that…
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For Survivor’s Grandson, Holocaust Still Reverberates in ‘East-West Street’
East-West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” By Philippe Sands Knopf, $32.50 448 pages At the beginning of Philippe Sands’s tour de force “East West Street: On the Origins of ‘Genocide’ and ‘Crimes Against Humanity,’” Sands offers a quote from the French psychoanalyst Nicolas Abraham. “What haunts are not the dead,…
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Never-Before-Seen Diane Arbus Photos on View at the Met
The new Diane Arbus show, which opened on July 12 at the Met Breuer, feels disorienting, even dizzying, at first, but not because of the content of the photographs or the overwhelming number of them (over 100). The second floor has been set up with rows of skinny, floor-to-ceiling panels in a diagonal arrangement, which…
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