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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How the Archive Thief Saved History — Then Stole It
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust By Lisa Moses Leff, Oxford University Press, 304 pages, $29.95 Seven decades on, we are still taking stock of the ancillary losses that were part of the Holocaust: the appropriated homes and businesses, the scattered possessions, the purloined artworks…
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How Jews Parted With Possessions Before Craigslist
Got stuff? If you’re anything like me, your closets bulge with clothes you’ve haven’t worn in years, your kitchen shelves are crowded with useless gadgets and the furniture in your living room is so worn out that it gives new – and literal – meaning to thread count. I’d say it’s time to de-clutter and…
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Film & TV Meet Sophie Tucker, the Yiddish Lady Gaga
Sophie Tucker used to open her act by saying her career dated back to the days when the Dead Sea was just sick. That, of course, is a slight exaggeration. But from around 1907 almost until her death in 1966, the ribald Tucker was the Madonna of her time. Today, in an age when fame…
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Orthodoxy’s Inconvenient Truths
Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History By Marc B. Shapiro The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 360 pages, $39.95 Orthodox Jews — especially Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox Jews — like to think of their religious practice as the most authentic form of Judaism. “We traditionally observant Jews… seek to observe the Torah’s mandate,…
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New York to London Town
Eytan Bayme and his wife, Cymbeline Kellett, met in New York City, his hometown, and after a whirlwind romance they made the move to London, her hometown. He is 35 and a writer born and raised in Riverdale, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx. She, 34, runs a specialist media-buying agency for the arts…
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The Only Abe Foxman Interview You Need To Read
Watching Abraham Foxman, outgoing national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wipe the tears off his face in front of an audience of about 1,200 people is an experience that one is not likely to witness often, if ever again. But it happened at a recent tribute to Foxman that took place at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria…
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How Omar Sharif Worked For Religious Tolerance
The greatest achievement of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, who died on July 10 in Cairo, may have been to prove that simple nonchalance may be the best path for mutual tolerance between religions. Acclaimed for screen performances in “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago,” Sharif courted controversy by accepting the role of American Jewish gambler…
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For Charles Aaron, It’s All About the Bikes
Charles Aaron grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, the same Minneapolis suburb that spawned Thomas Friedman, Al Franken and the Coen brothers, only Aaron had different ambitions: He wanted to run a professional bike team. His father gave him a Schwinn 10-speed for his bar mitzvah, which Aaron began racing, at first holding his…
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Art Nazi Museum Documents Munich’s Ignominious Past — and Puts Hitler in His Place
What would Adolf Hitler say today if he walked by Munich’s recently opened Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism? I posed this question to the German novelist Timur Vermes when we visited the city’s newest and most overdue museum together. Vermes was the perfect person to ask, as he is the author of…
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Harper Lee’s Jewish Lessons
Harper Lee passed away on February 19, at the age of 89. Alexandra Levine remembers the author’s Jewish lessons. “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published in 1960, and this week, 55 years later, the sequel comes out: “Go Set a Watchman.” The title is a biblical reference to Isaiah 21:6 — “For thus hath the…
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Leo Frank Stabbed in Georgia Prison
100 Years Ago Leo Frank, who just began to serve a life sentence in the large prison in Millersville, Georgia, for the murder of Mary Phagan, a girl who worked in the pencil factory he managed, is in critical condition after another inmate tried to slash his throat. In the middle of the night, two-time…
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Yiddish ווי ייִדישע קינדער־ליטעראַטור האָט געזאָלט העלפֿן קינדער פֿאַרשטיין די וועלטHow Yiddish children’s literature aimed to help kids make sense of the world
די אַמאָליקע קינדערביכער האָבן אָפּגעשפּיגלט כּלערליי פּאָליטישע וויזיעס און אויך אַ נײַעם פֿאַרשטאַנד פֿון קינדער און משפּחה־לעבן.
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