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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Six Surprising Facts About Montana Jews
1. Henry Jacobs, the first mayor of Butte, Montana, was Jewish. 2. When Helena’s Temple Emanuel was built in 1891, it was the only synagogue between Portland, Ore. and Chicago. 3. Until 2013, Helena’s police force had a dog name Miky (pronounced “Mickey”) who was trained by the Israel Defense Forces and would only respond…
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Books Leonard Maltin’s Last Movie Guide
The word is out. Leonard Maltin’s annual movie guide has fallen into what, in Hollywood speak, would be called “developmental hell.” First published in 1969 and annually since 1986, the new 2015 edition is its last. Like newspapers and other print media, it has fallen victim to the Internet, where much of the information is…
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Legendary South African Jewish Athlete Dies at 103
South African Jewish cricketer Norman Gordon, who has died today at the age of 103, epitomized speed and durability in sport. Gordon was the first Test cricketer to become a centenarian (duration is a key to Test cricket itself, the longest form of the sport, which may last up to five days.). In Gordon’s day…
The Latest
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How Kosher Food Came To Montana
When Rabbi Chaim Bruk and his wife Chavie Bruk arrived in Montana in 2007, they found a culinary desert, kosher food-wise. “Other than the generic food on the supermarket shelves, it was really difficult to find any kosher food — no frozen items, not a lot of dry goods,” the rabbi said. “It was a…
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No Ordinary Summer For Students in Israel War Zone
The Michigan State University students were still jet-lagged from their ten-hour flight when news of rockets striking Sderot reached them in Jerusalem. The next morning, June 29 — just the third day of their summer Jewish Studies program in Israel — the students heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaim Israel “ready” for what would soon…
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Music Israeli Band Shmemel Urges Aliyah — to Berlin
Still shows Israeli woman with a sign that reads “We left for Berlin.” / Shmemel “Berlin” is a very catchy tune, half-way between pop and hip-hop, performed by Israeli band Shmemel — and anyone who sees Israel as the Jewish homeland and/or can hum “Jerusalem of Gold” should probably give it a good hard listen….
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Investing in Colorado’s Youth and Beyond
Five years ago, Kendall Weistroffer had almost no connection to Judaism. The Colorado native rarely stepped foot in a synagogue, hadn’t celebrated a bat mitzvah and seemed as likely to study Finnish as Hebrew. She eventually met Rabbi Michael Sunshine, director of Jewish Student Connection, a network of Jewish high school discussion groups in Denver,…
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Changing Names of ISIS Reveal Growing Ambitions
Ed Ravin writes: “The American media refer to the jihadist movement that has taken over a big chunk of the Middle East as ISIS, an abbreviation of’ ‘the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.’ Canadian journalists, on the other hand, call it ISIL, for ‘the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.’ The Arabic word…
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‘Voices and Visions’ Spreads Through the World by Graphic Design
On a shady hill in Jerusalem, a group of students and their teacher pass around a poster. It’s a series of rainbow-colored arcs set against a grey background. Halfway down, a quotation, in black and white, from Martin Buber bisects the page: “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” Buber was…
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Travels in Poland and Israel, Between Old Wars and New
As I travel through Poland and Israel, watching, discussing and writing about films, I find myself tracing the continuities, as well as the tensions, of Jewish identity. The only child of Polish Holocaust survivors, I am returning to Poland for the first time in 25 years, exploring what Judaism means there now. My mother, who…
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Houdini, My Father and Me
My father, a New York psychoanalyst, wrote about the sons of passive or absent fathers. (There was doubtless a reason why they interested him.) Among his many elegant papers and monographs, covering such (seemingly) disparate characters as Bishop James Pike and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, are two published full-length biographies, one of Joseph Conrad (whose father…
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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
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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