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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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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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,…
The Latest
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Historic Holocaust Film ‘Night Will Fall’ Debuts at Last — Had Help From Hitchcock
A new film about a forgotten, long-shelved documentary chronicling the Allies’ discovery and liberation of the Nazi concentration camps is offering viewers a restored contemporaneous account of that seminal moment in history. The original, unfinished documentary has now, 70 years later, been reproduced and completed by the British Imperial War Museums. Titled “German Concentration Camps…
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How Daniel Pinkwater Became My Own Personal Guru
My girlfriend hates “Car Talk,” so I was listening alone while doing the breakfast dishes one weekend late last summer when Tom and Ray started pattering about airline seats that are too narrow for wide butts. “We need another unit of measurement for butt size,” said Tom — or maybe Ray, who knows. “We have…
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Why ‘Have a Nice Fast’ Isn’t Always the Right Thing To Say
In the boyhood days when I was still a more or less observant Jew, I always hated fasting on Yom Kippur. It struck me as the least spiritual thing I could do, since the more the hours went by with my empty stomach gnawing away at me, the more I could think of nothing but…
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Film & TV Ruby Rivlin Is This Palestinian Boy’s New Best Friend
When it comes to Israeli-Palestinian relations, there’s much to be cynical about lately. The 50-day long carnage resulting from Operation Protective Edge this summer, the frozen peace process, the dueling speeches by Netanyahu and Abbas at the U.N. — and then there’s the festering issue of Israel’s minorities. This week, Israel’s new president has come…
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The Secret Jewish History of Dr. Zhivago
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book By Peter Finn and Petra Couvée Pantheon, 368 pages, $26.95 The Russian Jewish poet Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was most celebrated by his compatriots for his lyric collections such as “My Sister, Life” and translations of plays by Shakespeare, Calderón and Schiller….
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‘You Can’t Take It With You’ Returns to Broadway With Jewish Look at Gentiles
“You Can’t Take It With You” sure isn’t going anywhere. It was Moss Hart and George S. Kaufmann’s third play and second big hit, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. The next year, Frank Capra adapted it for the movies, with Jimmy Stewart as his star, and the film won two Oscars, for…
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8 Facts About Jewish Indiana
1. 17,470 Jews live in Indiana, which is 0.3% of the state’s total population. In 1900, 25,000 lived here. 2. Grammy-winning violin player, Joshua Bell, grew up in Bloomington, where his father was a noted psychologist. 3. In 2013, former governor of Indiana and current president of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels tried to block the…
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What Has Become of the Historic Synagogues of Indiana?
What has become of Indiana’s historic synagogues? The following four historic synagogues were originally built as synagogues and are still standing in Indiana. This list is not exhaustive and it does not include historic Jewish congregations who worshipped in other types of buildings, such as homes and former churches, or other historic Indiana synagogues that…
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