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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How Sammy Davis Jr. Became the Great Jewish Entertainer
● Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey with My Father By Tracey Davis and Nina Bunche Pierce Running Press, 208 pages, $30 ‘Even when my own people would complain to me about racism,” Sammy Davis Jr. told his daughter shortly before the end of his life, “I would always say, ‘You got it easy. I’m…
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Music Jewish Ukrainian Mayor Regains Consciousness in Israeli Hospital
The Jewish mayor of Ukraine’s second-largest city regained consciousness in an Israeli hospital following what is believed to be an assassination attempt. Gennady Kernes, who heads the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, awoke Monday at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa after two surgeries, Kharkov’s chief rabbi and Chabad emissary, Rabbi Moshe Moskovitz, told…
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Music Two Palestinians Executed In Gaza Strip as Israeli Spies
Two Palestinians were executed in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday as Israeli spies, the enclave’s Islamist Hamas government said, adding they had helped the Jewish state’s armed forces carry out lethal operations. The condemned men, one of whom was hanged and the other shot by firing squad, “provided the Occupation (Israel) with information that led…
The Latest
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Music Mango the Bear Undergoes Surgery in Israel
(Haaretz) — Mango the brown bear was clearly in pain, as his keepers at Israel’s Ramat Gan Zoological Park observed some three weeks ago. He was eating well, but his walk had slowed and he clearly didn’t like getting up. Sure, there was clearly a problem, but just try asking a bear where it hurts….
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Music Ex-London Mayor Ken Livingstone Says Wealth Turns British Jews to Right
British Jews increasingly support the country’s Conservative Party because they are richer than they used to be, the former mayor of London said. Ken Livingstone made the comment Monday on the BBC’s Newsnight program, during a discussion about how ethnic minorities vote. He said that income, not minority status, determined a person’s voting preference. “As…
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Music Can Polyglot Odessa Avoid Stain of Separatist Massacre?
(Reuters) — Odessa: the very name conjures up an archetypal melting pot, a balmy oasis of tolerance and diversity, as well as a tsarist port of imperial grandeur, immortalised in film. But can a city forever associated with a massacre of civilians more than a century ago now avoid becoming known as the place where…
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Still Waiting for Godot
Killing the Second Dog By Marek Hlasko, translated from the Polish by Tomasz Mirkowicz New Vessel Press, 143 pages, $15.99 In the aftermath of World War II, while Europe was responding to the dissipation of the old empires and feudal orders by reconfiguring itself around capitalist and communist ideologies, its novelists took it upon themselves…
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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…
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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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