Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Sprinter Marty Glickman Left Anti-Semitism in the Dust
‘I don’t remember walking as a young person,” Marty Glickman once said. “I always ran.” “Glickman,” the sometimes inspiring, always fawning, HBO documentary about the life and times of the Olympian track star and legendary radio broadcaster, starts off fast, as well. The film takes on Glickman’s long life, quickly reaching the most notorious moment…
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Hebrew School Has Nowhere To Go But Up
About 40 years ago in Chicago, halfway through Hebrew school class, my teacher realized I was hiding under her desk, making faces at other students, trying to make them laugh. She sent me instantly to the principal’s office. The thing is, I was one of the “good kids” who rarely disrupted class and seemed genuinely…
The Latest
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David Coleman, the Most Influential Education Figure You’ve Never Heard Of
As a boy growing up in downtown Manhattan with a college president for a mother and psychiatrist for a father, David Coleman often had lively and lacerating dinner table conversations. “My parents, while both working, were home every night at dinner,” said Coleman, now 43. The family wasn’t satisfied with easy repartee. If Coleman went…
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How To Recognize a Secret Spanish Jew by His Marrano Accent
Dr. William Greenfield of Libertyville, Ill., asks: “Are you familiar with George Borrow’s identifying a living marrano in 19th-century Spain by his speech pattern? It’s in his book ‘The Bible in Spain.’” Never having heard of George Borrow, I went to the Internet and found a digital copy of “The Bible in Spain.” A fascinating…
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For One Teen, Getting a Jewish Education Was a Form of Rebellion
Someone once asked Pamela Anderson — the regular Playboy centerfold and “Baywatch” star — what she thought her two sons would be like when they grew up. She joked that in order to rebel against her, they would probably become accountants. Though the quote seemed like a throwaway comment, it creeps back into my mind…
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Catching up With Tuvia Tenenbom
Last year, journalist, playwright and critic Tuvia Tenenbom made quite an impression with the publication of “Allein Unter Deutschen” (“Alone Among Germans”; English-language title: “I Sleep in Hitler’s Room”). A frank and funny portrayal of modern-day Germany and the persistence of anti-Semitism there, the book rankled publishers, editors and journalists, while vaulting onto Der Spiegel’s…
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Have Judaica Will Travel — Through Dixie
When Rachel Jarman Myers, a Jewish educator, works with children in Jackson, Miss., she typically asks the students if they know any Jewish people. Sometimes, one child raises a hand. But when she specifies that the person cannot be Myers herself, the child’s hand almost always goes back down. The Jewish population in Mississippi has…
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The Midrashic Achievement of Poet John Hollander
The American Jewish poet John Hollander died on August 17 at age 83. At a 1990s New York literary gathering, I praised his translation of a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Golem.”. Hollander demurred modestly, not adding as he did to the poet Edwin Honig in 1985: “My mother’s family traditionally believes that my…
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Could a Facebook Group Provide a New Model for Jewish Education?
It all began at 5 a.m. one day in February 2013, in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Va. That’s when Ken Gordon and Yechiel Hoffman realized that the time was ripe for a grassroots overhaul of Jewish education. The two were guests at the North American Jewish Day School Conference,…
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Brooklyn GED Program Seeks To Help Put Haredi Men ‘On the Path’ to Employment
Usher Bixenspan’s regular attire includes a black hat, a black coat and peyes, but for one afternoon in June, he wore a maroon gown, a graduation cap and a big smile. Bixenspan, 20, was part of the first graduating class of B’Derech, an academic program geared toward ultra-Orthodox Jews. The goal of B’Derech — Hebrew…
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Jewish Gap-Year Program Opens in Portland
There are few, if any, options for teens in America who want a Jewish experience during their post-high school, pre-college gap year, but don’t want to spend time in Israel. That was a key incentive for Portland, Ore.-based contracting carpenter Steve Eisenbach-Budner to create Tivnu, the first Jewish social-justice themed gap-year program in the U.S.,…
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