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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Music
Ukraine Rabbis Meet John Kerry in Kiev
Top leaders of Ukraine’s Jewish community joined Secretary of State John Kerry near Kiev’s Independence Square yesterday to commemorate demonstrators who were killed protesting their government last month. In an email to the Forward, the country’s Reform Chief Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny said that he presented a book entitled “Jewish Wisdom” to the secretary of state…
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Is There an E.L. Doctorow in the House?
Andrew’s Brain: A Novel By E.L. Doctorow Random House, $26, 224 pages Is it just me, or does the idea of psychotherapy seem sort of hopelessly 20th century? All those not-quite-hours; all that money; all that talk talk talk talk talk — all to unearth, finally, the tiniest molecules of self-knowledge. Doesn’t it seem a…
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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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Yiddish פּאָדקאַסט: אַ לעבעדיקער שמועס אויף ייִדיש מיט דער אַקטריסע ליאַ קעניג Podcast: A lively conversation in Yiddish with actress Lea Koenig
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News AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks