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 the Legacy of Hugh Nissenson
The passing of Hugh Nissenson, who died last month at age eighty, is an incalculable loss for the literary world. The astonishingly gifted novelist’s reputation never escaped the confines of a small, devoted coterie of readers. There is something vaguely insulting in lauding the legacy of a man of letters and quickly attaching the underappreciated…
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Pete Seeger’s 7 Most Jewish Songs
Pete Seeger, who died yesterday at the age of 94, may have been a far greater believer in organizing people than he was in organized religion. “I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods,” he said when he was the subject of a PBS American Masters documentary. But growing up in the Jewish…
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Books Chasing the Ghost of Norman Mailer
● Norman Mailer, A Double Life By J. Michael Lennon Simon & Schuster, 960 pages, $40 While reading the first chapter of “Norman Mailer, A Double Life,” the exhaustive (and exhausting) new biography of the great man by J. Michael Lennon, I discovered that during his formative years, from the age of nine through his…
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Jews Beaten and Attacked in Fascist Pogrom in Mexico
1913 •100 years ago Late-Night Theater on Essex Street Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg of 111 Essex Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side split up four years ago. She stayed put, and her ex-husband left to make his way in Philadelphia. They allegedly remained on friendly terms, and Greenberg would occasionally visit his ex. Unfortunately, he…
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For One Orthodox Teen, Writing Letters to a Boy Changed Everything
(JTA) — The call came one evening in August. I was in Jerusalem staying with my oldest sister, Goldy, for the summer. “It’s for you,” Goldy shouted from the kitchen. “Aunt Fraidy!” Aunt Fraidy had been my host in my last year of high school. My parents, concerned about the influence of my modern Orthodox…
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The Secret Jewish History of the Super Bowl
On Sunday, February 2, all across the nation, worshippers will gather around their TV sets to take part in the annual ritual of that highest of American holidays: Super Bowl Sunday. While outside of Sid Luckman, Jews have yet to make much of an impact on the gridiron, the Super Bowl itself is a lot…
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Can Sephardic Jews Go Home Again — 500 Years After the Inquisition?
A reporter excercises his right of return
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Heyday of Jewish Boxing Recalled in Novel
(Haaretz) — A hundred years ago, the British magazine Boxing ran a story headlined “The Hefty Hebrew: The Shattering of a Silly Old Legend.” It featured a series of hard-hitting Jewish champs who were, the article declared, smashing ethnic stereotypes as they punched their way to glory in the ring. The years that followed became…
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When a Sentence Is Cruel and Unusually Long
An article on the Iranian nuclear program in the online paper the Washington Free Beacon tells of a reporter who asked a “senior administration official” about last November’s “Joint Plan of Action” agreement in Geneva. Did it, he inquired, prohibit the Iranians from designing new models of centrifuges? The answer received was: “We, designing is…
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David Krakauer Gets ‘The Big Picture’
You wouldn’t think that a musician of David Krakauer’s caliber would be looking to put a new spin on his work, what with a nearly 30-year track record of virtuosity playing chamber music, klezmer and, most recently, a thrilling mash-up of funk, hip-hop and klezmer. But Krakauer’s manager, Steven Saporta, broached the idea of the…
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Books Gary Shteyngart Does Not Have a Self-Esteem Problem
You might suppose, should you have any familiarity with the writings of Gary Shteyngart, which are widely (and not inaccurately) assumed to be autobiographical, that the author has a bit of a self-loathing problem. Many people do: Papa Shteyngart, for example, frequently exhorts his “Little Son,” “Don’t write like a self-hating Jew.” Papa and Mama…
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