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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Bakashot Makes Unlikely Comeback as Sephardic Jews Explore Traditions
(JTA) — The group of young Jewish professionals had gathered to participate in the revival of a Sephardic tradition hearkening back to the days of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Arriving at an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, they greeted each other in French and settled in around a dining table laid out with snacks…
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A Daughter’s Letter to Her Father for Mother’s Day
When I was a girl, on Friday nights, I would compete with my sisters for the privilege of fetching my father’s slippers when he returned home from prayers. My siblings and I would beg for the seat to my father’s left or right at the Sabbath meal. I was often chosen for this honor. My…
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Books ‘Clueless’ Advice: Alicia Silverstone Won’t Circumcise Son
Someone should have told Alicia Silverstone that once your claim to fame is a movie called “Clueless,” it’s probably a good idea to avoid spouting real-life clueless rhetoric. In her her new book, “The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning,” the…
The Latest
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Louis Armstrong’s Secret Lessons From Judaism
Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism By Thomas Brothers W. W. Norton & Company, 608 pages, $39.95 A massive, and massively detailed new biography, reminds music mavens that jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong assimilated lessons from Judaism and expressed them through music and writing during his long career. “Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism” by Thomas Brothers is…
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If You Don’t Know the Way to Hell, You Can Find It on a Map
George Jochnowitz writes about “gehenna,” an English synonym for “hell” that comes, via Greek and Latin, from the Hebrew word gehinnom. This in turn derives from gey ben hinnom, “the valley of the son of Hinnom” (or simply “the Valley of Hinnom,” as it is known in English), which is the biblical name of a…
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What If World War I Had Never Happened?
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I By Richard Ned Lebow Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pages, $27 In the introduction to his new book, “Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I,” Richard Ned Lebow discloses a poignant personal reason for his interest in counterfactual history. The professor of international political…
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American Protection for Mexican Oil Fields
1913 •100 years ago Military Protection for Mexican Oil Fields The latest news about Mexico makes it clear why such a murderous patriotism is being heated up and instigated in America: It’s cooking on an oil fire. Human blood must flow so that the oil supply will grow – in the tanks of the company…
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Music Roger Waters Urges Rolling Stones To Boycott Israel
Two founding members of the Pink Floyd rock band called on their colleagues from The Rolling Stones to cancel a concert in Israel. Roger Waters and Nick Mason made the call in an op-ed that was published Thursday on Salon.com. “Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of…
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The Cross-Dressing Racecar Driver Who Aided the Nazis (It’s Mostly True!)
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 By Francine Prose Harper, 448 pages, $26.99 The plot of Francine Prose’s new novel, “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932,” sounds, in an admittedly reductive summary, slightly preposterous: A cross-dressing French lesbian racecar driver collaborates with the Nazis, revealing where the Maginot Line ends, thus enabling the…
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‘Ida’ Revisits Poland in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Pawel Pawlikowski left Poland at the age of 14, but his childhood memories of his homeland never left him. It’s no surprise then that “Ida,” a stunning portrait of two very different women whose lives intersect in 1960s Poland, is the director’s most assured and confident narrative feature yet. The film takes place in the…
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Books The Joys of Amos Oz at 75
In Amos Oz’s “Rhyming Life and Death” it’s a sticky night in Tel Aviv, and the Author is to give a reading. Surveying the room, he begins to fashion life stories for the people attending. He takes note of a boy of about 16, moving restlessly in his chair. “He looks unhappy,” the Author thinks….
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