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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What Ari Roth and Theater J Could Have Learned From the Jewish Conciliation Board
These days, privacy seems to have gone the way of the rotary phone, overtaken by the contemporary yearning for transparency, accountability and the ubiquitous selfie. Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that conflict — be it domestic or institutional — is increasingly played out in the public sphere. It’s not enough that we now know…
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Sacvan Bercovitch, Acclaimed Scholar and Translator of Sholem Aleichem, Dies at 81
There can be no greater left-wing yichis than being named after Sacco and Vanzetti. The Canadian Jewish cultural historian Sacvan Bercovitch, who died on December 9 at age 81, was born to Russian Jewish parents who cherished a revolutionary ideal. In his “Rites of Assent,”, Bercovitch explained that he was drawn to America’s Puritans because…
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Jewish Cartoonist Georges Wolinski Among the Dead in Paris Terrorist Attack
Today’s terrorist attack in Paris on the editorial offices of the satirical magazine has left a reported twelve people dead. Among the deceased is the 80-year-old French-Jewish Georges Wolinski cartoonist who was the subject of his wife Maryse Wolinski’s 2012 memoir, “George, If You Only Knew.” According to Benjamin Ivry, writing for the Forward on…
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The One-Woman Hebrew School
In early 2010 I received an email with the subject line “Hebrew tutor for my (awesome!) 11-year- old daughter.” The dad who had sent that email found my name through the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I had done my undergraduate studies at the Double Degree program with Barnard College back in 2003. Someone in career…
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When Jewish Colonists Prospected for Utopia in Colorado
Imagine a windswept mountain town dotted with tar paper shacks. An unscrupulous mine owner twirls his moustache as he surveys the scene. Nearby, a one-eyed farmer and his fallen bride battle the rocky soil of their ramshackle homestead. Half-starved Indians skulk in the town’s shadows. Meanwhile, priceless cargo winds its way by train and wagon…
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Meet Lyla Black, America’s Youngest Jewish Toymaker
There are no monsters living under Lyla Black’s bed, and, she doesn’t want any living under yours. Lyla, a soft-spoken 8-year-old from the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, is the inventor of the Lyla Tov (Hebrew for Good Night) Monster, a plush happy-faced, pear-shaped stuffed toy that just won her the prestigious TAGIE award for young…
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Bess Myerson, the Bronx Beauty Who Refused To Change Her Name
The fact that Bess Myerson, whose death at age 90 on December 14 was recently announced, remains the only Jewish winner in the 90-plus year history of the Miss America pageant surely says more about that contest than it does about her. Social historians have compared Myerson’s victory in 1945 with the contemporaneous on-field triumphs…
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‘Selma’ Distorts History by Airbrushing Out Jewish Contributions to Civil Rights
When filmmakers choose what to include or exclude from the stories they tell, their choices often have repercussions beyond the drama on the screen. In films based on real-life events, omissions can seriously distort the way we remember the past. “Selma,” a film directed by Ava DuVernay, offers an ambitious portrait of Martin Luther King…
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An Autobiography in 19 Bob Dylan Concerts
A day before the show at the Beacon Theatre, I’m figuring this will be the last time I’ll see Bob Dylan perform. This doesn’t have anything to do with Dylan’s age — sure, he’s 73 and doesn’t play guitar in concert anymore, but he isn’t showing much evidence of slowing down. Just two years ago,…
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Of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Lehman Brothers and 5 Other Things About (Jewish) Alabama
1) Birmingham has contained Alabama’s largest Jewish community for nearly a century. About 5,300 Jews live there today. 2) Alabama’s first congregation was founded in 1844 in Mobile. 3) Abraham Mordecai was the first Jew to live in Alabama. In 1785 he set up a small trading post in an area which later became Montgomery….
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Deconstructing the Jewishness of the Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism by Jack Jacobs Cambridge University Press, 268 pages, $90.00 Most accounts of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, the grouping of social and political thinkers briefly based at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research until Hitler’s arrival to power forced them into exile, note that they were predominantly…
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