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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The Minivan Rabbi of Mississippi
Most rabbis wait for Jews to come to them. Rabbi Jeremy Simons goes to the Jews. As the new itinerant rabbi for the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, Simons drives through 13 states, serving 110 congregations from Oklahoma to Virginia. When we met with him in his office at the ISJL, a squat brown building…
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7 Facts About Jewish Mississippi
1. Mississippi’s first official Jewish religious service is believed to have occurred in the port town of Natchez in 1800. 2. Perry Nussbaum, rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Jackson, was heavily involved in the civil rights movement. In September 1967, the synagogue in Jackson was bombed by Ku Klux Klan members. In November of…
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Books A Heartbreaking Work of Intellectual Fiction
Florence Gordon By Brian Morton Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 320 pages, $25 Those who spend enough time with the title character of Brian Morton’s novel “Florence Gordon” are both fixated on and frustrated by her. That applies to the characters in the novel — Florence’s family, friends and literary peers and acolytes — but may well…
The Latest
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Books Holding a Vegan ‘Candle’ to Jewish Holiday Menu
Photography © 2014 by Jim Franco This is a sporadic column by personal chef Alix Wall, in which she evaluates a new cookbook by making some of its recipes, sharing them with friends and asking what they think of the results. When “Vegan Holiday Cooking from Candle Café: Celebratory Menus and Recipes from New York’s…
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Books Candle’s Vegan Chopped “Liver”
Photography © 2014 by Jim Franco Although this recipe is fairly labor-intensive, it is well worth the work. You may want to double the recipe since it disappears quickly from the table, and you may want to keep some for delicious leftovers. It is also best to make it the day before you’re planning to…
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Columbus May Not Have Been First Jew in America
(Haaretz) — On August 3, 1492, just three days after the deadline given to Spain’s large and vibrant Jewish community to convert to Christianity or leave the country for ever, three ships – the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria – set sail from the port in Palos de la Frontera West. They were heading for the…
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Books Hit Man to Las Vegas Rabbi in ‘Gangsterland’
David Cohen’s the new rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Las Vegas. He’s a learned guy who drops pearls of Torah wisdom for admiring congregants. And he’s overseeing both preschool and funerals for the growing shul. Oh, Rabbi Cohen’s also Sal Cupertine, a ruthless Chicago mafia hit man who’s had to assume a new identity…
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What’s an Angel of Rain Doing in a Jewish Sukkot Prayer?
The Israeli and Eastern Mediterranean climate is one of hot, rainless summers and — barring drought — cool, rainy winters, with spring and autumn as transitional seasons. This is why, though it has nothing to do with their own local weather (unless they’re living in Southern California), Jews all over the world pray briefly for…
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Journalist Anne Sinclair Opens Up About Everything — Except DSK
‘I’m a woman, I’m French, I’m Jewish, I’m a journalist, and I’m the granddaughter of my grandfather.” Anne Sinclair, 66, sipping a cappuccino at the Peninsula Hotel on Manhattan’s 5th Avenue, says that she has many identities, and now wants to put together “the pieces of her origin.” In the francophone world, she is perhaps…
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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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