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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A Civil Disagreement About Jews and War
On his second to last day as executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, Jonathan Karp is patrolling the galleries of the Center for Jewish History. “Passages through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War” is on exhibit here until August 11, at which point the majority of it will move to the Jewish…
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Two Meals, 30 Years Apart in Jerusalem
This is a story about food and marriage, and a very special place in Jerusalem. It is a story in three parts — the first two written more than three decades ago, the third written only last month. • It was April 23, 1980, precisely one month after my husband, Mark Berger, and I were…
The Latest
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Galleries Offer a Jew’s Who of the Contemporary Art World
On the wood-framed doorway of the gallery Untitled, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, hangs a mezuza. It’s small, unassuming, something you wouldn’t necessarily notice if not for the title of the exhibition inside: “Jew York.” But it turns out that the mezuza wasn’t installed for the show; it’s been there for years, since…
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Books From Awkward Fat Kid to Confident Gay Activist
A plump, cherubic bar-mitzvah boy beams from the cover the new memoir “Oy Vey! I’m Glad I’m Gay!” (Intracoastal Media). That’s Barry Losinsky, the book’s author, a retired Maryland school psychologist and one of many unsung pioneers in a generation of gay men who came out when it still felt dangerous. Born to Russian-immigrant parents,…
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Books Rachel Kushner’s ‘The Flamethrowers’ Arrives With a Bang
● The Flamethrowers By Rachel Kushner Scribner, 400 pgs, $26.99 In many ways, “The Flamethrowers,” Rachel Kushner’s novel about the historical, political, cultural and — most daringly — ideological chaos of the 1970s, is a simple bildungsroman. It tracks the sentimental education of its heroine, Reno, from starry-eyed, eager youth, lusting after experience — her…
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Books Author Blog: Visiting the Soviet Union
Yesterday, Peri Devaney wrote about working on the postscript for her anthology, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press). Today we hear from Ron Rubin, the prolific professor she anthologized. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and…
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Books Jewish Novel Included on Man Booker Longlist
Life in London’s Jewish community and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, billionaires in China and hard times in Ireland all feature in the novels vying for this year’s Man Booker Prize. The longlist for the prize, one of the English language’s top fiction awards, names 13 writers from seven countries. “This is surely the most diverse longlist…
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In Praise of Saul Leiter, Color Photography Pioneer
It was a good year for [Saul Leiter][1], who died Tuesday at the age 89. There’s a new documentary about his life and work, an exhibition of his photographs and paintings in London and earlier this year, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the ArtHamptons International Fine Art Fair. Over the course…
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The Top 10 Allan Sherman Lyrics
10 – “King Louie was living like a king” (“You Went The Wrong Way Old King Louie”) 9 – “Al ‘n Yetta watched an operetta/Leonard Bernstein told them what they saw” (“Al ‘n Yetta”) 8 – “Come let us go there/Live like Thoreau there” (“Here’s to the Crabgrass”) 7 – “And you won’t have a…
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Books How To Be an Egotistical Writer From South Africa
Things I Don’t Want to Know: A Response to George Orwell’s Why I Write By Deborah Levy Notting Hill Editions In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” George Orwell identified four great motives for writing, including aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. The other, he observed, was that writers are “vain and self-centred,” motivated…
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Books Author Blog: Putting Myself on the Line
Peri Devaney’s new book, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press), is now available. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: As a…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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