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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Remembering Alain Resnais and His Complex Relationship With Jews
The French film director Alain Resnais, who died on March 1 at age 91, had a complex relationship with Jews. For many years, his 1955 film “Night and Fog” was shown in classrooms as an approach to understanding the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. Yet Resnais’s aims were both more and less than this purpose,…
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Is Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s ‘The Passenger’ Only Holocaust Opera ‘Worth Watching’
Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s parents and sister died in a concentration camp, his Yiddish-language actor father-in-law was killed on Stalin’s orders and the Polish-born composer himself was imprisoned by the KGB and only released after Stalin’s death. His moving Holocaust opera “The Passenger”, which revolves around a former camp guard who recognises a former inmate on an…
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A Glimpse of Jewish Warsaw
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here Menachem Kipnis is known to Jewish history as a cultural figure who worked across several fields. Born in Uzhmir, Ukraine in 1878, Kipnis distinguished himself as a singer, ethnomusicologist and journalist. As a singer he was the first Jewish tenor in the Warsaw Opera (1902-1918) and…
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Music Americans in Israel Targeted by IRS for Tax Audits
This upcoming tax season entails some unpleasant surprises for United States citizens who either live in Israel or who hold bank accounts there. Filing requirements for these Americans have become more rigorous and the odds of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service are higher than they’ve ever been. In fact, tax accountants working in…
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A Personal History of Blood Libel in Poland
Some years ago, an obsession with Polish poetry led me to two ideas: First, that I should visit Poland, and second, that someone else should pay for it. So I wrangled a Fulbright fellowship and spent a year traveling in Poland. (I mention the Fulbright not to brag, but because it bugs me when travel…
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Great Debate Between ‘Among’ and ‘Between’
Rabbi Jonathan H. Gerard of Easton, Pa., gently corrects me for writing in my column of February 14, after listing various English newspaper translations of a Hebrew phrase used by Israeli Minister of Commerce Naftali Bennett, “Not that there’s an enormous difference between any of these.” Rabbi Gerard comments, “Of course, you meant ‘among.’” Did…
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Palestine Vies for Oscar With ‘Omar’
Despite Robert Frost’s warnings to the contrary, there seems to be something in the Arab-Israeli conflict that very much loves a wall. The most familiar walls are those built in the name of Israeli national security, which continue to draw international scrutiny, and which Jews and Palestinians view from opposite sides of a decades-long struggle….
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Snow Is Both Signal and Static for Artist Kon Trubkovich
The idea behind Moscow-born Jewish artist Kon Trubkovich’s upcoming show at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York is at once simple and complicated, which is often, and certainly in this case, a good thing for an idea. The idea, as described in Trubkovich’s excitable but considered delivery, “is basically snow.” In practice, this translates to…
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Our Month With the Lemba, Zimbabwe’s Jewish Tribe
Zimbabwe is not a popular tourist destination for Americans Jews, or Americans at all. But in October of last year, we — a retired lawyer and a retired health care executive from New York City — went there to meet with an emerging Jewish community with ancient roots, the Lemba. Modreck Maeresera, one of the…
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When I Played Klezmer for Kiev Uprising Crowd
Dmitry Gerasimov is the leader of a Ukrainian klezmer band that performed for protesters at the Kiev uprising. He describes the experience in an essay that was translated into English by Talia Lavin (JTA) At the Maidan, your clothes quickly start smelling like a campfire; in the metro, you can figure out who has been…
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Conan O’Brien’s Hasidic Maskmaker
‘When one puts on a mask, one frees oneself,” said Stanley Allan Sherman. Sherman has been making masks for over 30 years, yet his career defies easy categorization. His clients have ranged from pro-wrestlers to high-wire walker Philippe Petit, for whom he created a top hat that would remain on his head during performances. Sherman…
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