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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Why God Can Sometimes Sound Female
Irving Salzman has a question about an ancient Hebrew prayer, the answer to which involves some fine points of linguistic history that may not interest everyone. Yet since the prayer is one that all of you who are synagogue-goers know and may have wondered about, too, I’ll risk discussing it. The prayer begins with the…
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A Jew Joins the Académie Française
In April, after the deaths in recent years of such venerable French Jewish members as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and biologist François Jacob, the Académie française increased its quotient of Yiddishkeit. That day, the author Alain Finkielkraut, born in Paris in 1949 to a family of Polish Jewish origin, was elected to join the group of…
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6 Lessons From Young Dr. Sigmund Freud
Seventy-five years after his death, Sigmund Freud still remains an eminent figure of Western culture. The Viennese doctor’s theories about the workings of the human psyche, from dreaming to homosexuality, are considered outdated by many researchers and practitioners. But various forms of psychotherapy including psychoanalysis, also known as “the talking cure” live on. “Becoming Freud,”…
The Latest
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Bernard Berenson and the Art of Seduction
● Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade By Rachel Cohen Yale University Press, 344 pages, $18.98 Born Bernhard Valvrojenski in 1865 to a tin-peddling father in the Pale of Settlement, Bernard Berenson transformed himself into one of the most influential connoisseurs of Italian Renaissance art. An aspiring scholar, Berenson wrote a series of…
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The Most Psychedelic Jewish Movie Ever Made Is Back
‘How does it feel to be completely free at last?” asks Mike, a bearded American hippie, as he and his three newfound Israeli friends sit grooving around a campfire. “Man, I feel really turned on!” A veteran of the Vietnam War, Mike has come to Israel by way of Rome, seeking to leave the horrors…
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Rivka Galchen’s Short Stories Transport Readers Into Magical Worlds
● American Innovations By Rivka Galchen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 192 pages, $24 The stories in Rivka Galchen’s “American Innovations,” aren’t all fantastical — although a fair number include elements of magic realism and science fiction — but even the most realistic stories in this collection have a kind of magical quality about them that…
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Books Ex-Hasidic Writers Go Off the Path and Onto the Page
When she was 17 years old, Leah Vincent, a young Orthodox woman from Pittsburgh, found herself living alone in a tiny basement apartment in Brooklyn. She was estranged from her parents and 10 siblings, socially isolated, and living on a low-wage diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and ketchup. Desperate for company, she sought the friendship…
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The problem with John Judis’s book about Harry Truman and the Jews
Judis is clear about his agenda in writing 'Genesis'
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Why Do Jews Meditate? It’s All in the Worrying!
Dan Harris already had a lot going for him: He’s co-anchor of ABC News’ “Nightline” and “Good Morning America,” and a respected journalist. Now he’s also a best-selling author, with his recent memoir-cum-report on meditation, “10% Happier.” The book, subtitled “How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, And…
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The Most Beautiful Word in the World?
The Hebrew word ḥ eshbon, pronounced “khesh-BONE” (with the second vowel halfway between an “o” and an “aw”), can mean sum, arithmetic, bank account or bill, and is also found in a number of common Israeli idioms, such as l’havi b’ḥ eshbon, to take into account; la’asot ḥ eshbon, to make a reckoning or assessment;…
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Books Alice Munro Meets Auntie Chayele in Shirley Faessler Work
● A Basket of Apples By Shirley Faessler Now And Then Books, 184 pages, $18.95 Nobel laureate Alice Munro called Shirley Faessler, whom she knew personally, “a witty and uncompromising writer.” Readers of Faessler’s recently reissued collection of short stories, “A Basket of Apples,” will undoubtedly agree. Originally published in 1988 and long out of…
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