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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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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A Storied History Among Anti-Semites in France
The French Jewish writer Pierre Assouline has long grappled with moral dilemmas resulting from the Nazi occupation of his country. In 2012, he was the first-ever Jew elected as one of the ten jurors for the Goncourt Prize, France’s top literary award meant to encourage young writers, established in 1903. Assouline’s newest novel, “Sigmaringen,” is…
The Latest
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Why Non-Orthodox Judaism Is Doomed
Back in 1977, a young writer published a bold book that tried to propel aliyah, or emigration to Israel, to the heart of the American Jewish agenda. Hillel Halkin, who had made the move himself from New York seven years earlier, didn’t mince his words, and declared the Diaspora “doomed.” The future of the Jewish…
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How Alison Levine Reached the Summit of Everest and Business
Alison Levine is scheduled to speak to the New York chapter of 85 Broads, a national women’s networking group. That is, she will speak if she can get to the meeting room. Levine and her retinue — four representatives of her publisher and a reporter — are in the lobby of the McGraw-Hill Building trying…
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No One Cared About Sex Education in Soviet Russia
● The Scent of Pine By Lara Vapnyar Simon & Schuster, 192 pages, $25 Twist endings must be well-beloved, so often are they deployed today. (Here’s a twist: Let things be what they are.) To be fair, late-in-the-game surprises, especially when things add up, more or less, are mostly a reviewing annoyance, forcing a reckoning…
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Lipa Schmeltzer Reaches For Broadway and Beyond
It’s not every day that Town Hall, New York City’s fabled home to Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and other legendary performers, gets to welcome a yarmulke-clad crowd of 1,500. And it is not every day that the yarmulke-clad crowd of 1,500 gets to see one of its own perform on a Broadway stage. On the…
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A Kabbalah for Architects?
● Kabbalah in Art and Architecture By Alexander Gorlin Pointed Leaf Press, 192 pages, $60 ● Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums By Stephanie Shosh Rotem Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 217 pages, $71.20 Although architecture has long been thought of as enjoying minimal importance in the Jewish tradition, present-day scholarship continues to show…
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Apple’s Jewish History — 30 Years After Iconic Super Bowl Ad
Thirty years ago, a revolutionary Super Bowl commercial by Apple boldly proclaimed that “1984 won’t be like 1984” because of the imminent arrival of the Macintosh computer. Two days later, on January 24, a young Steve Jobs officially introduced the computer that would change the history of personal computing. But behind the charismatic, bow-tied genius…
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Books B.J. Novak Is Writing a Children’s Book
All that dancing around to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” in “Saving Mr. Banks” seems to have given B.J. Novak a taste for children’s literature. The Jewish actor and TV writer, who plays composer/lyricist Bob Sherman in the movie about the making of “Mary Poppins,” has signed with Penguin Young Readers Group to do a…
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Picturing Love and Intermarriage in New York
In September 2009, an Israeli TV and internet campaign aimed at dissuading Jews from marrying non-Jews upset many in the Diaspora – including Yael Ben-Zion, an American-born photographer, who lives together with her French, non-Jewish husband in New York City. So Ben-Zion, 40, who grew up in Israel, posted an ad at an online parenting…
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News AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks