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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Writing About Gaza From Comfort of Debra Winger’s Manhattan Pad
(Haaretz) — It’s so weird to be writing from here. To be writing from New York, where we decided to make a week-long stop before going on to Illinois. How can I write about what’s happening in Israel when I’m not there? How can I sound credible writing about the children in the Gaza Strip…
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Remembering More Than a Century of Bel Kaufman’s Rebellious Charm
Bel Kaufman, who has died on July 25 at the age of 103, once told an audience at Iona College in 2011: “You’re laughing. It’s a very good sound, the sound of survival.” Born Bella Kaufman in 1911, she is best known as author of the 1965 bestseller “Up the Down Staircase” a fictionalized version…
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Ari Goldman Goes From New York Times Journalist To Amateur Cellist
“One of the messages of the book is that you can’t wait for brilliance.” Spoken by Ari Goldman, veteran journalist for the New York Times, author of four books, including 1992’s “The Search for God at Harvard,” and my former professor at Columbia Journalism School, these words seemed odd to me — the life lesson…
The Latest
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Anya Ulinich Makes Her Graphic Debut
Although her mother hasn’t read her new book, Anya Ulinich already fears the worst. When Ulinich was in the early stages of writing the novel two years ago, her mother begged her to stop. “She hates the idea of this book,” Ulinich said. Ulinich’s novel, “Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel” isn’t a salacious memoir. It’s a…
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Richard Linklater’s ‘Boyhood’ Captures the Spirit of the Time
One of the great productive tensions between Jewish tradition and contemporary spirituality is that between time and the timeless. On the one hand, the passage of time is central in Judaism. Some of this time passes in a linear fashion — we age along with life-cycle events , from birth to death — and some…
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Avery Corman’s Bronx Tale
As Avery Corman and I sit on a bench outside of the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Bronx, I use the term “fairy tale” to describe the setting of his new memoir “My Old Neighborhood Remembered.” Corman, author of the novels “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Oh, God” among other books, smiles when he hears…
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Woody Allen’s ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ Will Be Forgotten Soon
Woody Allen should have quit while he was ahead. I admit it’s hard to say when that was. Would it have been in the late 1980s, after the dark and soulful “Crimes and Misdemeanors”? Was it in the late ’90s, after “Sweet and Lowdown,” starring an incomparable Sean Penn? Or was it earlier in this…
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Film & TV VIDEO: How To Fight Voyeurism in Gaza
When some of us hear “Gaza,” we picture bombs or rockets or rubble. What if, instead, we pictured an adorable little girl in a pink hat? Or a grandfather playing with his grandchild? Or young men handing out ice cream cones? A new short film by Palestinian filmmaker Hadeel Assali is an ingenious exercise in…
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Why Amos Oz, Israeli Author and Peace Activist, Can’t Hide From Rockets of Gaza
When air raid sirens sound in Israel, some disabled and elderly residents are unable to take shelter before the missiles land. One of them is named Amos Oz. Oz, Israel’s renowned man of letters, is confined to his bed in a Tel Aviv hospital following knee surgery. With only one-and-a-half minutes of warning before the…
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Actually, Toto, We Are Still In Kansas
The morning of the annual Old Mission Hills Fourth of July Party, I warned Adharsh, my boyfriend at the time who was visiting from New Orleans, about what to expect.” “We’re kind of going to stick out,” I said. “My family, I mean. We always do.” “Speak for yourself,” he said, grinning. “I came prepared.”…
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8 Things About Jews In Kansas
1) Approximately 17,775 Jews live in Kansas. 2) The nation’s only Kansas City Barbeque Society-sanctioned kosher barbecue festival takes place in Kansas City. 3) The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education was founded by Holocaust survivors, Isak Federman and Jack Mandelbaum, and is located in Overland Park, Kansas. 4) 2,000 Jews attend the University of Kansas….
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