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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Sure, Jesus Was Son of God. But How Was His Fiction?
● Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi By Amy-Jill Levine HarperOne, 320 pages, $25.99 When we were children, many of us (especially those of us in yeshivot) were taught to abominate the Christian Scriptures; they were precursors to 2,000 years of Jew hatred. At the very least, it was suggested…
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‘Dig’ Is Too Shallow by Far
(JTA) — Last summer, in the midst of the Gaza conflict, the threat of rocket fire forced NBC Universal’s “Dig” to stop production in Jerusalem and move out of the country. If only the show itself were half that dramatic. Instead, “Dig,” which premiered Thursday on the USA Network, is a rather flat amalgam of…
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A Tale of Two Netanyahus, One Play and One Speech
About a third of the way into “A Happy End” — Iddo Netanyahu’s play about a Jewish physicist’s family that naively chooses to remain in Berlin in the 1930’s — there’s a brief discussion about the impossibility of simultaneity. Young Hans Erdman reveals to his parents, Mark and Leah Erdman, that his anti-Semitic high school…
The Latest
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The Novel France Can’t Put Down Depicts Muslim Future — Or Does It?
● Soumission By Michel Houellebecq French and European Publications Inc, 320 pages, $49.95 Though it pretends to be about France’s near future, Michel Houellebecq’s controversial “Soumission” is also about its recent past. Set in the year 2022, the novel portrays a country riven by conflicting ideologies and worldviews, teetering on the edge of civil war….
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How Growing Up Jewish Taught Me To Love Hip-Hop
On February 25, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company premiered “This Is Modern Art,” a new play for its Young Audiences series. Kevin Coval, a poet and author and the founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival, co-wrote it with playwright Idris Goodwin. The play took as its inspiration a 2010 incident when…
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The Thing You Didn’t Know About Documentary Filmmaker Albert Maysles
We mourn Albert Maysles, one of the undisputed masters of filmmaking, with extra clarity, for his death throws our modern era’s obsession with over-eulogizing into sharp focus. Albert was not another “indispensible” documentarian that fill our graveyards (and Facebook walls); he was the real deal, the primary source. You’re either ripping Albert off, or your…
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A Textbook Case of Anti-Semitism in Oldenburg
Oldenburg, Germany, is made of people who are historically ahead of their time. “In 1932,” a man tells me as I arrive there, “the people here were the first to vote for a local Nazi government. We did it before Berlin!” This man, I learn quickly, is not the only one in Oldenburg who remembers…
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Century of Treyf at the Best Jewish Deli in the Bronx
Teitel Brothers, a corner grocery in the Bronx, is the sort of specialty store that retains the loyalty of its customers years, even decades, after they’ve left the neighborhood. On a Friday morning in January, both the weather and business are brisk, and Gilbert Teitel wants to prove the devotion of his customers. He has…
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Of Goldie Hawn, Barry Levinson, Leon Uris and 10 Other Things About Jewish Maryland
1) 238.200 Jews live in Maryland. 2) Born in Portugal, businessman Jacob Lumbrozo became Maryland’s first Jewish resident in 1656. 3) Mendes Cohen, who was immortalized in a recent exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, helped to defend Ft. McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in 1846. 4) Starting out his professional career as…
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How Synagogue Music Breaks Down Barriers Between Denominations
We may fret about declining enrollments in rabbinical seminaries and the ever-rising tide of intermarriage, yet one aspect of the contemporary Jewish experience should lift our spirits rather than roil them: music. From monthly concerts and annual festivals that cast a spotlight on the creativity that pulses throughout the community to Shabbat services where, week…
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Documenting the Life of Documentary Filmmaker Albert Maysles
The American Jewish filmmaker Albert Maysles, who died on March 6 at age 88, received the National Medal of Arts in 2014 for his celebrated documentaries on the Beatles; the Rolling Stones; and the reclusive relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in “Grey Gardens.” Yet arguably, the most enduring inspiration for Maysles’s artistry was from Yiddishkeit….
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