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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My Venetian Bar Mitzvah
In Venice, my wife and I like to stay in the old ghetto, which sits in ideal proximity to sundry picturesque attractions, yet somehow feels insulated and tucked away. My hunch is that the neighborhood’s name, despite its antiquated origin, keeps away the riffraff. “This is where your people used to live,” my wife, Francesca,…
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The Sephardic Bibliophile of Brooklyn
On a nondescript street of brick row houses, nestled between an insurance office and a computer store, in an out of the way corner of Brooklyn known as Marine Park that is not on any subway lines, lies a small storefront. From the street, it’s impossible to see in — the glass windows are blocked…
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HomeLands: Building a Brooklyn Nest
William Levin, 43, and his wife Malya Kurzweil Levin, 31, have lived together for five years in their beloved and rent stabilized apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. William is a creative tech consultant and cartoonist. Malya is a lawyer and currently works as a staff attorney at an elder abuse shelter, the at the Hebrew…
The Latest
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Growing Up Hasidic — and Racist
On April 22, 1987, my mother was rushed to Interfaith Medical Center, situated on the outskirts of Crown Heights in Brooklyn. My mother was new to this country, without anyone to guide her about things like where to give birth to her firstborn, me. She claims I was the only white baby in the nursery….
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POEM: Vilna Fairytale
Over rooftops and forests, rivers, domes and the belfries of Vilna, the magic carpet in my mind flies to a small maze of buildings where the ghettos used to be. Near the river flats, and that green bridge Milosz writes about in a poem — the bridge where my mother was almost arrested for being…
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Can a ‘Twedding’ Be Kosher?
As the 200 guests entered the wedding hall at the Marriot hotel in Kansas City, Missouri last month, they had to wish the bride and groom mazel tov twice; first, to Brittany Choikhit and her groom, Max Margolies, and then to Brittany’s sister, Ashley, and her groom, Daniel Held. “We always wanted a double wedding,…
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When Deadwood Was Jewish
There were multitudes of Goldbergs in the Bronx where I grew up, but here in Deadwood, South Dakota? When I got here, few in my certifiably tiny Black Hills Jewish community knew much about its history. There was little to be found in books about Jews of the Old West. But soon, family names, microfilmed…
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Of Calamity Jane. Mount Rushmore and 5 Other Things Facts About Jewish South Dakota
1) 345 Jews live in South Dakota, the smallest Jewish population in any state of the union. 2) South Dakota is the only state without a Chabad presence. 3) Mt. Zion, founded in 1903 in Sioux Falls, is the state’s oldest congregation. 4) Blanche Colman was the first female lawyer to practice in the state….
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Art Why the Status of Judaica Is Waning
Last month’s column, as you may recall, made much of Judaica collectors who prefer to sell rather than donate their holdings. No sooner had I made that claim than a number of readers as well as colleagues duly informed me that I was barking up the wrong tree. Dolefully, they pointed out that even if…
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Film & TV Barbara Kopple Faces The Nation
“Hot Type,” Barbara Kopple’s documentary about The Nation, celebrating the liberal magazine’s 150 years, begins with a snappy rat-a-tat of typing. We see typewriters from every era, signaling the passage through time via technology. As The Nation’s editor in chief for 20 years, Katrina vanden Heuvel, notes in the film, “I used to man the…
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From This You Make a Living?
What do you want to do when you grow up? my Grandma Sil always asked. “I want to be a cantor,” is what I said. It made her smile and hug me. “Cantor” meant I was not only deeply engaged in the lessons of my yeshiva but also that I longed to sing about it….
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