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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Jill Sobule’s Adaptation of ‘Yentl’ Hews Closely to Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Groundbreaking Work
Somehow it seems absolutely right that the woman who wrote and sang the MTV hit “I Kissed a Girl” and “Supermodel” is penning the slightly subversive, excellently wry and humorous music and lyrics for “Yentl.” No, not the “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” “Yentl” that Barbra Streisand boldly made in homage to herself; the upcoming…
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Yiddish Tango Is Irresistible Musical Hybrid
(JTA) — The music that packs the Skirball Cultural Center’s stately courtyard – Yiddish tango – is a musical hybrid twice over. On the tango side, it is a blend of African-born rhythms and a potpourri of European music styles. On the Yiddish side, it combines mournful liturgical melodies with folk songs. Tango, too, is…
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A Report From the Jewish Genealogists’ Summer Camp
As a latecomer and a relative newbie in Jewish genealogy, I have to admit I was a little apprehensive this July as I walked into the lobby of the Hilton Salt Lake City Center where the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies was holding its 34th annual conference. This was the tribe’s gathering of the…
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A Burning Memory of Utah
In Ogden, Utah, where I grew up, the streets are named after United States presidents. They run in chronological order from the city center up to the Wasatch Mountain Range, ending with Buchanan. The only exceptions are Lincoln and Grant, which curiously precede Washington — a tribute to the war that began and ended before…
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6 Surprising Facts About Jewish Utah
1. Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, donated land to create the first Jewish cemetery in Salt Lake City. 2. Simon Bamberger became Utah’s fourth governor after he was elected in 1916. 3. In 1934, students at the University of Utah created an anti-fascist group to “defend minority rights…
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The Details Are in the Devil
Christophe Barbier, editor of the influential left-leaning French weekly L’Express, published a column in his paper earlier in August about the upsurge of anti-Semitism in France in the wake of the fighting in Gaza. After condemning the phenomenon, Barbier turned to French Jews and in turn condemned those of them who, despairing of life in…
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When We Marched Together in Selma
Selma. Nearly 50 years ago it was violent Selma, impossibly racist Selma, site of Bloody Sunday, when peaceful civil rights marchers made their first attempt to cross the Pettus Bridge on the way to the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. They succeeded on their third attempt, protected by federal troops. You’ve seen the famous picture…
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The Beatles Take New York
1914 • 100 years ago A No-Goodnik in Brownsville In July we reported how Max Kaplan, a children’s pants manufacturer in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, ran out on his wife, Yetta Kaplan, and their three children, leaving them without any means of support whatsoever. After the report appeared, Max Kaplan himself appeared in our…
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Hitler and Stalin Sign Pact Turning the Tide of War
1914 • 100 years ago Russia to Give New Freedoms to Jews In relation to the current war and its need to pacify its allies, Russia is making noises about liberalizing its policies toward its Jewish citizens. According to a British journalist for the Times of London, the Russian government is preparing an official document…
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A New Literary Take On Soviet-Jewish Immigration
In this year, the year of the Soviet American Jew, when it seems like every man, woman and child who hails from the good old USSR and owns a writing implement has detailed his or her experience, fictionally or otherwise, let us praise Yelena Akhtiorskaya, whose new novel “Panic in a Suitcase” makes something unexpectedly…
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6 Things You Need to Know About Jewish Sperm
Be fruitful and multiply. The Biblical command sounds so straightforward, yet it can be anything but. In order to conceive a child, some aspiring parents — be they lesbian couples, single mothers, or straight men with poor sperm quality — need a little outside help… at least a few milliliters of help, to be precise,…
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