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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HomeLands: ‘A Shtetl in Manhattan’
Letty Cottin Pogrebin, 75, and her husband, Bert Pogrebin, 81, have been living in their co-op apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side since 1970. They moved in when their twin daughters, Abigail and Robin, were 5 years old, and their son, David, was 2. Bert is a labor and employment lawyer at Littler Mendelson P.C….
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European Parliament Demands Soviet Union Give Jews Rights
1915 • 100 Years Ago Forty-eight-year-old fruit peddler Israel Ziftz was cutting coconuts when the knife he was using slipped and wound up going directly into his chest. Ziftz, who lives in East Harlem, realized he was in trouble, and so he went hastily to Beth Israel Medical Center, where doctors quickly grasped that, with…
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Film & TV How a German Jewish Refugee Became a Master of Film Noir
In London, the British Film Institute — the leading organization for film in the U.K. — is running a two-month season dedicated to the renowned German Jewish filmmaker, Robert Siodmak (1900-73). The centerpiece of this major retrospective of over 20 films is the re-release of “Cry of the City” (1948), a noir crime thriller that…
The Latest
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Why the ’60s Were the Most Interesting Decade After All
Richard Goldstein has written a book that refutes the old saying, “If you remember the 1960s, you weren’t really there.” Goldstein, the former Village Voice executive editor who helped invent rock criticism with his omnivorous “Pop Eye” column, seems to have been more “there” during the decade than almost anyone else. The self-described “Zelig of…
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A Summer in Paradise
At first glance Alfred and Sylvia Lawrie were hardly the sort of people one would have called intimidating. Alfred was in his late 70s, tall and vague, one of those elderly men who stay long and skinny in the arms and legs, but put on weight in the middle. His beard was white and haphazard,…
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My Storied Life With Gerald Shapiro
In the awful middle of the night hours right after Gerry’s death, when I couldn’t concentrate on anything and was wondering how I was going to get through the night, much less the rest of my life, it occurred to me that the one thing I could do was reread Gerry’s stories, and they comforted…
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Of Max Baer, Joe Lelyveld and 8 Other Things About Jewish Nebraska
Six thousand one hundred Jews live in Nebraska with the majority concentrated in Omaha and Lincoln. The Jewish Press, Omaha’s weekly Jewish newspaper, has served Nebraska and western Iowa since 1916. The Reform Temple Israel, established downtown in 1871, moved to midtown and, in 2013, to the western suburbs, where it occupies the grounds of…
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Art A Diaspora at the New Museum
Would you know what it means if I say that we are living in a post-Internet age? A whole lot has been said regarding the designation, but consensus, alas, remains out of grasp. Nonetheless the notion stakes its claim on, even demands, our attention: Whatever, wherever, the post-Internet may be, welcome to it. “Surround Audience,”…
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Baseball’s Jewiest Moment of All
In the top of the ninth inning of a game at Detroit’s Briggs Stadium between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Detroit Tigers on May 2, 1951, things looked bleak for the A’s. They trailed, 3-1, they had a runner on first base, and there were two outs. Manager Jimmy Dykes summoned Lou Limmer to pinch-hit…
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POEM: First Knowledge
Translated from the Hebrew by Ariel Resnikoff and Rivka Weinstock Kisses to the wall Kisses to the alphabet that hung there & the trash-man asks me: You still haven’t conquered The alphabet? – No Still no! First Knowledge fear of heaven, in the first Letter, aleph. Secrets of secrets In aleph! Kisses to the wall…
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Film & TV Why Iris Apfel is a ‘Big Sensation’
Iris Apfel will tell you that she doesn’t like pretty. That may seem like a bold statement from a self-proclaimed geriatric starlet. But then again, as the Queens-born daughter of Jewish parents asks, how many 93-year-old cover girls do you know? A model, a jewelry designer, and a collector, Apfel is now the star of…
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