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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Diary of Girl’s Time in Concentration Camps Invites Comparisons to Anne Frank
● Helga’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp By Helga Weiss, translated by Neil Bermel W.W. Norton, 240 pages, $24.95 Seven decades after the Holocaust, survivor stories are still trickling out, adding nuance to a familiar and gruesome narrative. It is sometimes hard for these latecomers to get the attention…
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American Nazis Arrested
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75 and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 years ago 1913 Samuel Cohen, 73, and 67-year-old Constantine Donohue both came to the United…
The Latest
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Books Author Blog: Statues and Golems
Earlier this week, Helene Wecker shared a golem-centric reading list and wrote about writing a novel in two cultures and Dorkdom. Enter to win a copy of her debut novel, “The Golem and the Jinni,” here. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s…
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Robert Alter Is Truly a Translator of Biblical Proportions
Literary scholar Robert Alter has spent the past three decades shedding new light on one of Western civilization’s oldest and best-known texts. In his 1981 work “The Art of Biblical Narrative” and subsequent writings, Alter has argued that the Hebrew bible is threaded through with a previously unrecognized set of sophisticated literary techniques that unify…
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Books Under the Influence of Golems
Earlier this week, Helene Wecker wrote about writing a novel in two cultures and dorkdom. Enter to win a copy of her debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, here. 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…
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Author Jennifer Gilmore’s New Novel Confronts the Mother of All Struggles
● The Mothers By Jennifer Gilmore Scribner, 288 pages, $26 In her novel “The Mothers,” Jennifer Gilmore has written the book all women of a certain age going through the infertility cycles of hell long to hand to any member of the fertile world who asks that innocent but searing question: So, are you pregnant…
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Books Gary Shteyngart Wrote a Memoir
The next work from Gary Shteyngart, the novelist known for books such as “Absurdistan” and “Super Sad True Love Story,” will be a memoir, The New York Times reports. The book will be titled “Little Failure” and will be released in January 2014 by Random House. According to Shteyngart’s editor, David Ebershoff, the book will…
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Books Writing a Novel in Two Cultures
Earlier this week, Helene Wecker wrote about dorkdom and writing while Jewish. Enter to win a copy of her debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, here. 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,…
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Books The Wayward Moon
Our lives can change in an instant, which is exactly what happens to Rahel bat Yair, a 17-year-old girl about to be engaged to be married. Mere minutes after her father’s enemy arrives at her home as she gets ready to meet her betrothed, the sheltered teenager is forced to flee and assume a new…
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Stuart Nadler’s Story of Interracial Love Explores Tensions in Jewish Families
● Wise Men By Stuart Nadler Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur, 352 pages, $25.99 In Stuart Nadler’s debut novel, a Jewish boy named Hilly, whose father has suddenly become enormously wealthy, falls in love with a black girl named Savannah whom he barely knows. The encounter, in 1950s suburbia, has far-reaching ramifications that will haunt Hilly for…
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Books The Most Jewish Thing I Do
Enter to win a copy of Helene Wecker’s debut novel “The Golem and the Jinni” here. 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: When I started looking through the extensive and awe-inspiring…
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