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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Meet Maccabi Tel Aviv Star Sylven Landesberg
It is an exciting time to be part of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team. In May, the team shocked the basketball world by winning the 2014 Euroleague Championship. Then in June, coach David Blatt was hired to be the new coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, where superstar LeBron James will play this upcoming season….
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For Patrick Modiano, Nazi Occupation Offers Rich Backdrop to Tales of Trial and Triumph
Although London’s betting parlors had claimed the odds-on favorites for this year’s Nobel Prize for literature were Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Japan’s Haruki Murakami, the choice of France’s Patrick Modiano was good news for Jewish readers. In awkward English, the Nobel Academy referred to Modiano’s obsession with wartime France as the “art of memory…
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What Does This Photo of Tashlikh Say About the Evolution of Jewish Life?
You have seen her before. She stands, swathed in white from tip to toe, on the walkway of a bridge, peering intently at the book she holds in her hands. She exudes a sense of solitariness, but she is not alone. A phalanx of men clad in black gather to her left. She is flanked…
The Latest
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Books Patrick Modiano, French Sephardic Novelist, Wins Nobel for Literature
(Reuters) – Patrick Modiano, a Sephardic French novelist, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature as “a Marcel Proust of our time,” The Swedish Academy said on Thursday. French writer Patrick Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for works that made him “a Marcel Proust of our time” with tales often set…
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Himmler Documentary Reflects Evil of Banality
Hannah Arendt’s embattled phrase, “banality of evil,” describing Nazi master murderer Adolf Eichmann, may go a long way to illuminate his colleague in Hitler-era genocide, Heinrich Himmler. The documentary “The Decent One,” based on a cache of memorabilia including letters, diaries, and photos belonging to this proud Nazi, somehow private since the war, shows him…
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Meet the Yiddish-Speaking Grandmothers Who Retired as Amsterdam Prostitutes
Like many Jewish grandmothers, Martine and Louise Fokkens enjoy talking about their grandchildren in language laced with Yiddish. At 71, the twins from Amsterdam also paint, think often about the Holocaust and attend synagogue on Jewish holidays. But the Fokkens are not like most Jewish grandmothers. For one thing, they recently retired after 50 years…
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Books ‘How I Stopped’ Reading Shlomo Sand’s Crackpot Memoirs
How I Stopped Being a Jew By Shlomo Sand Verso, 112 pages, $16.95 ‘How I Stopped Being a Jew” is the strangest book that I have ever reviewed. I used to grant that distinction to the memoir by the psychic who claimed that aliens healed her anal cyst. But this one is even stranger. At…
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Why Are Israel’s Top Models All Blondes?
Model Galit Gutmann in an ad for ‘Crazy Line.’ Photo by Dudi Hasson/Haaretz (Haaretz) — It was supposed to be her big break after winning the Israeli version of “Big Brother.” In March, Ethiopian-born model Tahounia Rubel was chosen to appear in a new ad for the April Cosmetics chain. She was to appear alongside blonde…
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How To Beaver Your Way To an Award-Winning Sukkah in Oregon
Seen one sukkah, seen ’em all — or so Rain Chan-Kalin thought. The 20-something project designer at Berkeley design/build firm Friedman Brueggemeyer grew up around garden-variety sukkahs and describes them as if she’s reciting a recipe for a not-especially-delicious meal: “three walls, maybe part of a fourth; some sort of plastic sheeting or fabric; reeds…
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7 Facts About Jewish Oregon
47,500 Jews live in Oregon. On June 1st 2014, the Portland Sephardic community celebrated its 100th anniversary. Ambacht Brewery makes matzo-based beer called “Ambacht’s Matzobraü,” made from leftover matzo collected from the local Jewish community. Bernard Malamud, author of “The Fixer,” “The Natural” and “The Assistant,” taught at Oregon State University from 1949-1961. Ron Wyden,…
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Books Growing Up in Jazz Age Chicago
On Bittersweet Place By Ronna Wineberg Relegation Books, 270 pages, $13.95 As Ronna Wineberg’s novel “On Bittersweet Place” opens, the Czernitski family is escaping Russia. Revolution is in the air, and the family fears religious persecution. In the prologue, set in 1922, Lena, the young narrator of the book, spells out the fears she associates…
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