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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Sid Caesar, Brought Jewish Humor to Middle America, Dies at 91
Sid Caesar, who has died at the age of 91, was more than just a pioneer of TV comedy. As his memoirs “Where Have I Been: An Autobiography” (Crown Publishers, 1982) and “Caesar’s Hours: My Life in Comedy, With Love and Laughter” (PublicAffairs, 2003) recount, his achievement was a blend of second generation immigrant Jewish…
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The Top 10 (Jewish) Valentine’s Songs
Begun over 1500 years ago as a Roman liturgical commemoration of Christian martyrs, Valentine’s Day has gradually expanded in scope over time to become an all-inclusive celebration of romantic love. (Though martyrdom can of course still be involved, should you fail to live up to the expectations of your significant other on February 14.) With…
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Vilna Synagogue Is Rare Gem in Tony Boston Neighborhood
The 10-minute walk from Boston’s Charles/MGH Red Line stop to the Vilna Shul meanders along narrow tree-lined streets with picturesque streetlamps and houses in the ritzy Beacon Hill neighborhood. It’s easy to walk right past the synagogue, which is set back from Phillips Street behind a fence with a Star of David, as one hurries…
The Latest
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Hebrew Charter School Movement Shows Signs of Growth — and Growing Pains
Less than a decade old, the nascent Hebrew charter school movement is experiencing growth and growing pains. The most visible sign of the movement’s expansion is the appointment of Jon Rosenberg — an experienced civil rights attorney and not-for-profit manager — to be the first president and CEO of the Hebrew Charter School Center, a…
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Why It’s So Hard for Naftali Bennett to Say I’m Sorry
Did he or apologize or didn’t he? The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that he did. Israel’s minister of the economy, Naftali Bennett, on the other hand, declared that he had not apologized at all, but had simply issued “a clarification” when telling an audience at a conference January 29: “If the prime…
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Israel’s Model of Engineering Education Comes To American Jewish High Schools
The classrooms that Adam Jerozolim visits each week don’t have neat rows of desks and chairs. There are no teachers standing at the front. Instead, he said, they each “look like a mad scientist’s lab”: computer chips everywhere; a mass of light bulbs, Legos and circuit boards strewn about. The students are huddled around tables,…
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How Jews Gave Real Estate a Good Name
In the two cities I call home, New York and D.C., real estate is the stuff of enduring conversation. Discussing who lives where and in what kind of habitat — condo, co-op, private home or rental apartment — never seems to grow stale. Nearly as compelling a topic, or so it seems to me, is…
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Anne Frank House Marbles Show Rolls In Big Crowds
(JTA) — When the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam unveiled its widely publicized offsite display of its namesake’s marble collection this week, it was yet another example of this small museum having a big impact with tiny objects. Despite its narrow scope and limited exhibition material — in a city where visitors can choose from…
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Being Jewish in Germany — Or Not
Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany By Yascha Mounk *Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 272 pages, $26 Marcel Reich-Ranicki, postwar Germany’s leading literary critic, who died last year at the age of 93, once described himself as “half Polish, half German and wholly Jewish.” Reich-Ranicki later denied that claim, insisting instead…
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Zach Braff’s New Movie, ‘Wish I Was Here,’ Plays on Actor’s Jewish Upbringing
Day school parents can take heart from Mr. Scrubs. “Wish I Was Here,” Zach Braff’s Kickstarter-funded film, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January. Fans — especially the 46,520 who helped pay for it to be made — were eagerly awaiting the “Garden State” follow up. And, exactly a decade after Braff’s first…
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Send Iraqi Jewish Archive Back Where It Belongs
At the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, 24 items from the Iraqi Jewish Archive have just gone on display. I attended the February 3 opening of the exhibit, entitled “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage.” It included a 16th century Hebrew Bible, a hand-lettered Passover Haggadah from 1902, and a 1967 school…
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