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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Of Bob Dylan, Sandy Koufax and 10 Other Things About (Jewish) Minnesota
1 45,635 Jews live in Minnesota. 2 The first Jews settled in Minnesota in 1849, nine years before the state joined the union in May, 1858. 3 Floyd Bjørnstjerne Olson, a member of Minnesota’s Farmer Labor Party, was Minnesota’s Governor from 1931-1936. When he was growing up, Olson served as his neighbor’s Shabbos goy and…
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POEM: Bus Ride, Early September Morning
The young girl, who looks no older than seven or eight, her black hair draped on her arms, leans out of the bus window as if she were sleeping. Only her turquoise and black shirt, ripped open, and the blood streak down the side of the bus tell you she is dead. In Jerusalem, workers…
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How YIVO Became a Lasting Cultural Center
YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture By Cecile Esther Kuznitz Cambridge University Press, 324 pages, $95 As it stands today, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is the brick-and-mortar memory of East European Jewry. Photographs, letters, theater placards, diaries, institutional records, and rabbinical responsa are just some of the documents in its collection….
The Latest
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Music How Adam Levy Channels His Grief Through Music
At a coffee shop in northeast Minneapolis, a short walk from his home, Adam Levy turns over his left forearm to show the spider tattoo that his son Daniel designed. It’s from the day he and Daniel got tattoos together, a father-son outing that left him with this souvenir. Levy is the front man for…
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Art American Jews Are Ready For Their Selfie
On a bright, sunny day in 2007, Alina and Jeff Bliumis stood on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, asking strangers to choose an identity. Volunteers could pick from three options — “Jewish,” “American” and “Russian” — and then pose in front of the sign or signs bearing that designation. By the end of the day, 52…
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A Jewish Comedian’s Guide to China
(JTA) — How do you tell a joke in China about Jews when the only things most Chinese think they know about the Chosen People is that they’re smart and good with money? That was Jesse Appell’s quandary when he moved to China three years ago from Massachusetts with plans to become a comedian — and,…
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Why Al Pacino Is Wrong To Reject a Nazi Sympathizer
This week actor Al Pacino, a cinematic legend, canceled his participation in a Danish theater adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger” (1890). The reason, said the Aveny-T theater’s manager, Jon Stephenson, was that Pacino “couldn’t come to terms with Knut Hamsun’s support for the German occupation and Nazism.” And while there’s no question that Hamsun’s…
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Cooking Sabra-Style in Brooklyn
Israeli native , 44, is a chef and restaurateur, who with her husband Stefan Nafziger, 39, owns and manages some of New York City’s most popular eateries. Their three restaurants, Balaboosta, Taïm and Bar Bolonat offer contemporary Israeli food that has earned them some accolades along the way. Admony and Nafziger have been living together…
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Music Why Neil Diamond Still Matters
Back in 1967, in the midst of his initial run of brilliantly pithy three-chord pop singles, Neil Diamond cut a pair of radio jingles for Coca-Cola. One of them was an upbeat rocker in the Latin-tinged “Cherry, Cherry” vein, the other a slow strummer that built to a crescendo a la “I Got the Feelin’…
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How David Javerbaum Became Ghost Writer for God
David Javerbaum’s list of accomplishments stretches from Earth all the way to heaven. He’s won 11 Emmys and two Peabody awards as writer and producer of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” While there, he helped author “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” (winner of the Thurber Prize for Humor) and its…
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Why the World Still Needs Saul Bellow
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune By Zachary Leader Knopf, 832 pages, $40 ‘Was I a man or was I a jerk?” Saul Bellow asked on his deathbed. By “man,” of course, he meant mensch. Zachary Leader, Bellow’s new biographer, answers Bellow’s dying question: “Both.” Bellow was a jerk: Famously prickly and…
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