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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Modern Music With Minimalist Roots
Defining Bang on a Can is hard. Founded in 1987 by composers David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, it is a musical collective made up of composers and musicians dedicated to performing, producing, and commissioning new music that is innovative in some way. Among their most prominent projects is the annual Bang on a…
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Lower East Side Anarchist Declares Hunger Strike in Prison
1914 • 100 years ago An Anarchist in Manhattan Rebecca Edelson, a well-known anarchist on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, has declared a hunger strike in prison, where she is serving a three-month stint after being arrested for refusing to stop giving a speech on a street corner. According to eyewitnesses, hooligans were throwing stones at…
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Shady Lower East Side Salesman Takes Advantage of Young Women
1914 • 100 years ago Man Using Immigrant Women For many years, one of the well-known figures on Manhattan’s Lower East Side was a ship ticket salesman named Max Wax. If one needed to purchase a ticket from Europe to America, Wax was the go-to man. But Wax appears to be in big trouble after…
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What’s a Nice Jewish Boy Like Jake Kasdan Doing Making a ‘Sex Tape?’
Jake Kasdan has been on a roll lately. He’s executive producing and directing episodes of “New Girl,” the Zooey Deschanel comedy about to begin its fourth season on Fox. His last film, “Bad Teacher,” starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, cost about $20 million to make and grossed over $216 million at the box office….
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The Gift Nadine Gordimer Gave to Me
There is one quality that is perhaps more important to a writer than any other. Nadine Gordimer, who died this week in South Africa at the age of ninety, not only possessed it in abundance but was able to grant a measure of it to others, as she did to me when I was struggling…
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Books Now You Can Call Ishmael, To Talk About Books
“Call me Ishmael,” declares one of the most famous opening sentences in Western literature. But what if the narrator of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” was actually asking you to call him? That was the whimsical thought Logan Smalley offered in a spirited bar conversation about notable first sentences. He jotted the notion down on a…
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Star of the Show That Inspired ‘Homeland’ Discusses How TV Affected Reality in Israel
“Prisoners of War,” the Israeli TV drama that inspired “Homeland,” will be released on DVD in the United States on July 8 — and the timing couldn’t be better. “POW” concerns three Israeli soldiers who finally get to return to their families after 17 years in captivity, only to discover that life in the public…
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The Women Rabbis Of New Mexico
When I tell East Coast Jews that I’m from New Mexico, the first question out of their mouths is invariably, “Are there Jews in New Mexico?” Once I’ve quashed the temptation to shoot back, “What do YOU think?” I go on to explain. Yes, there are Jews in New Mexico. Yes, there is a synagogue…
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6 Things About Jewish New Mexico
Fancy some green chili in your matzo brei on Passover? Then you should go to New Mexico. Here are six things about Jewish New Mexico you should know. 1) New Mexico is home to many of the last crypto-Jews, who claim that their ancestors fled to Mexico during the Spanish Inquisition to escape persecution. Over…
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Indie Rock With A Spiritual Core
The Antlers are a Brooklyn-based indie rock band best known for their intense 2009 opus “Hospice,” a concept album about a terminally ill child in a cancer ward. However, to label the group as “sad rock” would be to underestimate their talent. Prior to “Hospice,” The Antlers was singer Peter Silberman’s solo project. He released…
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The Jewish Life and Times of Nadine Gordimer
The South African Jewish author Nadine Gordimer, who died on Sunday, July 13, at age 90, expressed an even-handed humanism throughout her literary career. This is far from the case for every winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, which Gordimer was accorded in 1991. Her scrupulous sense of fairness, which motivated her to oppose…
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