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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Childhood Beliefs
Last time we checked in with artist Liana Finck, she was asking Facebook friends what they thought God looked like. Today, she asks a more personal question: What were your childhood beliefs? The answers are enlightening. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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Is ‘Amy Winehouse’ Exhibit Too Loving a Portrait?
(Haaretz) — “Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait,” an exhibition originally curated with the assistance of the late singer’s brother and sister-in-law at the Jewish Museum London, has relocated, almost intact, to Tel Aviv. In addition to the fact that Winehouse, who died from alcohol poisoning at age 27 in 2011, has won pride of place in…
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‘Crossing Brooklyn’ Scratches Surface of Hyperlocal Potential in Hippest Borough
Oy, the Brooklyn Museum, that large white creature of Eastern Parkway, how it wants to belong and be loved! It’s nothing if not willing to change. It changed its name twice between 1997 and 2004. Ten years ago it spent millions of dollars to literally open itself up to the surrounding neighborhood, replacing its entrance…
The Latest
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Books King (Norman) Lear Looks Back at Those ’70s Shows
When he was 9 years old, Norman Lear had a life-defining epiphany. He was at home one evening, fooling around with a crystal radio set he’d gotten as a gift, when he managed to tune into a broadcast by Father Charles Coughlin, the infamous anti-Semitic Roman Catholic priest. “At 9 I learned that people disliked…
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Books The Secret Jewish History of ‘My Fair Lady’
● Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist’s Letters Edited by Dominic McHugh Oxford University Press, 336 Pages, $39.95 Sometimes the Yiddishkeit of a creative talent comes through only in private writings. Playwright and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner won immortality with the stage musicals “My Fair Lady,” “Camelot,” and “Gigi,” which are filled with British and French…
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Better Call Saul Steinberg
This is the centenary year of artist Saul Steinberg, probably best known for his cover art for The New Yorker, particularly, “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” his illustration of the world as seen by a typically myopic New Yorker. As part of the celebratory events surrounding the centenary, the Art Institute of Chicago…
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Books The Girlfriend He Left in Vienna
In my parents’ basement I found a box of my grandfather’s, marked “C.J. Wildman, personal”; inside it I discovered another, smaller file box labeled “Patient Correspondence, A–G.” The letters were not from patients; they were from the life he left behind in Vienna when he fled the Nazis: half-siblings, cousins, friends — and a girlfriend….
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Books My Life in Exile
Hugh Roth is the younger son of Henry Roth, author of “Call It Sleep” and “Mercy of a Rude Stream.” Growing up, Hugh worked on his father’s waterfowl farm in Augusta, Maine, in the 1950s. After some decades in and around New York, he now lives on Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Rockland,…
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The Hasidim of Brooklyn Are Ready for Their Close-Up
The art at the Brooklyn Public Library branch on Grand Army Plaza just got a little more frum and a little more Japanese. Through February, the library is featuring a black and white photo exhibit depicting the life and rituals of Crown Heights’ Chabad Lubavitch hasidim. The exhibit, entitled “The Hasidim of Crown Heights, Brooklyn;…
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8 Facts About Jewish Missouri
1. Approximately 59,000 Jews live in Missouri. 2. Mark Twain’s relationship with Jews in Missouri was complicated. The Levys were the only Jewish family in his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. As a kid, Twain joined other kids in his community in hazing the Levy kids. Only later in life did he become something of a…
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The Only Thing Worth Working For, Worth Fighting For, Worth Dying For
● Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1933-1939 By Monty Penkower, Touro College Press, 348 pages, $39 Monty Noam Penkower, in the latest of his fine works on the genesis of the State of Israel, examines in detail the history of 1930s Palestine. But counterintuitively, Penkower’s context for “Palestine in Turmoil: The Struggle for…
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
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Music Can 6 hours of Billy Joel turn critics into believers?
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Opinion What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?
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