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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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At 92, Mike Greenstein Is Still One of the World’s Strongest Jews
Seated on the balcony of his apartment in the Far Rockaway section of Queens with a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean, Mike Greenstein, 92, is matter-of-fact about his Superman powers. Just recently, he participated in this year’s Olde Time Coney Island Strongman Spectacular, pulling a truck with a chain clenched between his teeth. “It’s…
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How SeaWorld’s Treatment of Killer Whales Violates Jewish Law
If you’re looking for a good cry but are tired of Adele and don’t have the time for “Les Misérables,” try watching the first 20 minutes of “Blackfish,” the new documentary by Gabriela Cowperwaith, originally in theaters and set to air on CNN in October. You’ll hear the story of the 1983 capture of Tilikum,…
The Latest
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Can You Name Your Kid ‘Messiah’?
You may have read about Lu Ann Ballew, the Tennessee judge who recently changed a 7-month-old baby’s name, Messiah, to Martin. Her ruling was based not on compassion for the poor infant, but on the opinion that “the word Messiah is a title and it is a title that has only been earned by one…
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Books Fall Brings a Rich Harvest of Books
A bounty of Jewish and Israeli-themed books awaits readers this fall, with choices ranging from the gently nostalgic to the deeply disturbing. In both fiction and nonfiction, the past is very much present. Much of the fiction draws heavily on history (“A Guide for the Perplexed,” “Dissident Gardens,” “The Lion Seeker”) or autobiography (“Between Friends”)….
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France Has Problems With All Religions — Not Just Islam
A couple of months ago, the French media reported on yet another clash between religious extremists and state authorities. Fifty boys from a private religious school near Paris arrived at a public lycée to take their final examination; however, when two women serving as their proctors met them, there was a standoff. The students, citing…
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Did Jews Win the Second World War?
● How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism By Benjamin Ginsberg Rowman & Littlefield, 234 pages, $35 Benjamin Ginsberg’s intriguing new book, “How the Jews Defeated Hitler,” offers a provocative new answer to an old question. In seeking to explain why the Jews failed to resist…
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Books Booker-Nominated Novel Raises Jewish Themes
Laura and Marina are strangers. Their home in London is an island with a foreign culture, a cramped flat in Bayswater in which they are themselves outsiders. Their keepers — Laura’s mother-in-law, Marina’s grandmother, and her two sisters — are Hungarian, and speak with a heavily-accented English. Dar-link, they say. Von-darefool. Tair-ible. They host parties…
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The Dark Comic Arts of Daniel Clowes
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s exhibit “Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes” (on view through October 13) ought to come with a parental advisory about its explicit content. Although the cover of one of the comic books that hangs in the show — “Eightball” No. 8 (1992) — is recommended “for mature readers,”…
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Books How Lizzie Skurnick Went From Young Adult Authority to Publisher
Writer and book critic Lizzie Skurnick has spent years poring over the young adult classics of her youth. She’s scoured eBay for them, studied them like a talmudic scholar, praised them in (hilarious) writing. And now, at long last, she’s putting the books back out in the world for the rest of us to enjoy….
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Books Author Blog: The Golden Child
Lauren Grodstein’s books include the novels “The Explanation for Everything,” “A Friend of the Family,” and “Reproduction is the Flaw of Love” and the story collection “The Best of Animals.” Lauren teaches creative writing at Rutgers-Camden, where she helps administer the college’s MFA program. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of…
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Israel Museum’s Herod Show is King of Exhibitions
Rome and Jerusalem, the birthplaces of modern Western civilization, share an infamously bloody history. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman general Titus in 70 C.E. effectively excised Jerusalem from the world’s annals for almost 2,000 years, while securing its place in prayer books. In our collective memory, the two seem eternally at…
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