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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Books
5 Jewish Books To Read in 2014
At this time of year, I’m confronted with the many books published in 2013 that I haven’t yet managed to read. It seems that every day another “best-of” list materializes to remind me of the recurrent truth: There’s just never enough time to get to all of the books that I’d like to read, not…
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Was Marcel Proust Jewish, a Jew-Hater — or Both?
(Haaretz) — This was the year of Marcel Proust in the literary world. The centenary of the publication of the first part of “In Search of Lost Time” (formerly translated as “Remembrance of Things Past”) was marked by a plethora of articles, conferences, exhibitions and public readings of the highly influential work. So enshrined is…
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Why 2013 Was the Year Fiction Got Political Again
There was a time, not so long ago, in the 1960s and ’70s, when being a serious fiction writer required not just a talent for evoking nuanced moments of lived life, but a consciousness of the intellectual and political context in which our lives were being lived. Writers — many of them Jewish — as…
The Latest
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How Children’s Books Discovered Their Jewish Roots
In many ways, 2013 has afforded Jewish children’s literature the big break it has needed for some time — perhaps akin to the widespread attention that Jewish comic books and graphic novels have received for years, with their Jewish mice and superhuman men punching out Hitler. At the Chicago Humanities Festival in November, Paul Reitter,…
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Channeling and Challenging Eccentricity at Israel’s National Library
New York-based Israeli artist, Ofri Cnaani, has been having quite a year. One of her live video installations was screened as part of “The Met Reframed” artist residency series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March. A site-specific video installation titled “Moon Guardians” was displayed in Chelsea. Recently, Cnaani arrived in Tel Aviv, to…
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Why Theresa Bernstein Was the Jewish Artist of the Century
Artist Theresa Bernstein liked crowds. A retrospective of her work, on display through January 18 in New York at The Graduate Center, CUNY’s James Gallery, features her 1923 painting “The Immigrants,” which depicts figures grouped together on the bow of a ship. In the foreground, a mother holds a baby clearly evoking a Madonna and…
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Why ‘The Goldbergs’ Is the Worst Thing To Happen to Television
I might be the worst possible audience for “The Goldbergs.” It’s not that I grew up in the ’90s, and the show — an ABC sitcom that just finished its first season — is all about the ’80s. And it’s not that, having grown up without a TV, many of the show’s references would be…
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On and Off Broadway, 2013 Was the Year of The Transitional Jew
Jews of all stripes surfaced on stage this past season, starting with appearances in four notable bio-dramas: “Soul Doctor,” the musical about the rock star Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach; Joe Gilford’s “Finks,” loosely based on the experience of his blacklisted parents, Jack and Madeline Lee Gilford; and two solo shows, “I’ll Eat You Last, a Chat…
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Mami, Oh Manischewitz, What an Album!
In the early months of 1954, with their debut single “Gee” still climbing the national pop and rhythm and blues charts, doo-wop quartet The Crows entered a Manhattan studio to record a Latin-flavored dance number called “Mambo Shevitz (Man, Oh Man).” Featuring upbeat backing from an Afro-Cuban-style ensemble billed as Melino and His Orchestra, the…
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Film & TV How To Get De Niro and Stallone in the Ring
Thirty years ago, boxers Billy “the Kid” McDonnen and Henry “Razor” Sharp split two hard-fought light heavyweight contests. But for reasons soon revealed, there was never a rubber match, despite the personal animosity between the two. Now, three decades years later, a young promoter has convinced them to participate in a “Grudge Match,” which will…
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How Jews Took Over Berlin in 2013
In April, a glass case in Berlin upset and polarized the Jewish world. An exhibit at the Jewish Museum, entitled “The Whole Truth… Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Jews,” included an installation consisting of a half-open glass case with the question “Are there still Jews in Germany?“ printed on it. On a bench…
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