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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Books
Patrick Modiano, French Sephardic Novelist, Wins Nobel for Literature
(Reuters) – Patrick Modiano, a Sephardic French novelist, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature as “a Marcel Proust of our time,” The Swedish Academy said on Thursday. French writer Patrick Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for works that made him “a Marcel Proust of our time” with tales often set…
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Himmler Documentary Reflects Evil of Banality
Hannah Arendt’s embattled phrase, “banality of evil,” describing Nazi master murderer Adolf Eichmann, may go a long way to illuminate his colleague in Hitler-era genocide, Heinrich Himmler. The documentary “The Decent One,” based on a cache of memorabilia including letters, diaries, and photos belonging to this proud Nazi, somehow private since the war, shows him…
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Meet the Yiddish-Speaking Grandmothers Who Retired as Amsterdam Prostitutes
Like many Jewish grandmothers, Martine and Louise Fokkens enjoy talking about their grandchildren in language laced with Yiddish. At 71, the twins from Amsterdam also paint, think often about the Holocaust and attend synagogue on Jewish holidays. But the Fokkens are not like most Jewish grandmothers. For one thing, they recently retired after 50 years…
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Books ‘How I Stopped’ Reading Shlomo Sand’s Crackpot Memoirs
How I Stopped Being a Jew By Shlomo Sand Verso, 112 pages, $16.95 ‘How I Stopped Being a Jew” is the strangest book that I have ever reviewed. I used to grant that distinction to the memoir by the psychic who claimed that aliens healed her anal cyst. But this one is even stranger. At…
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Why Are Israel’s Top Models All Blondes?
Model Galit Gutmann in an ad for ‘Crazy Line.’ Photo by Dudi Hasson/Haaretz (Haaretz) — It was supposed to be her big break after winning the Israeli version of “Big Brother.” In March, Ethiopian-born model Tahounia Rubel was chosen to appear in a new ad for the April Cosmetics chain. She was to appear alongside blonde…
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Books Growing Up in Jazz Age Chicago
On Bittersweet Place By Ronna Wineberg Relegation Books, 270 pages, $13.95 As Ronna Wineberg’s novel “On Bittersweet Place” opens, the Czernitski family is escaping Russia. Revolution is in the air, and the family fears religious persecution. In the prologue, set in 1922, Lena, the young narrator of the book, spells out the fears she associates…
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How To Beaver Your Way To an Award-Winning Sukkah in Oregon
Seen one sukkah, seen ’em all — or so Rain Chan-Kalin thought. The 20-something project designer at Berkeley design/build firm Friedman Brueggemeyer grew up around garden-variety sukkahs and describes them as if she’s reciting a recipe for a not-especially-delicious meal: “three walls, maybe part of a fourth; some sort of plastic sheeting or fabric; reeds…
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7 Facts About Jewish Oregon
47,500 Jews live in Oregon. On June 1st 2014, the Portland Sephardic community celebrated its 100th anniversary. Ambacht Brewery makes matzo-based beer called “Ambacht’s Matzobraü,” made from leftover matzo collected from the local Jewish community. Bernard Malamud, author of “The Fixer,” “The Natural” and “The Assistant,” taught at Oregon State University from 1949-1961. Ron Wyden,…
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Historic Holocaust Film ‘Night Will Fall’ Debuts at Last — Had Help From Hitchcock
A new film about a forgotten, long-shelved documentary chronicling the Allies’ discovery and liberation of the Nazi concentration camps is offering viewers a restored contemporaneous account of that seminal moment in history. The original, unfinished documentary has now, 70 years later, been reproduced and completed by the British Imperial War Museums. Titled “German Concentration Camps…
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How Daniel Pinkwater Became My Own Personal Guru
My girlfriend hates “Car Talk,” so I was listening alone while doing the breakfast dishes one weekend late last summer when Tom and Ray started pattering about airline seats that are too narrow for wide butts. “We need another unit of measurement for butt size,” said Tom — or maybe Ray, who knows. “We have…
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Why ‘Have a Nice Fast’ Isn’t Always the Right Thing To Say
In the boyhood days when I was still a more or less observant Jew, I always hated fasting on Yom Kippur. It struck me as the least spiritual thing I could do, since the more the hours went by with my empty stomach gnawing away at me, the more I could think of nothing but…
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