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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‘Tent’ Creates At-Home Birthright for Jewish Culture
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. In 2013, The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., launched an ambitious series of cultural programming aimed at providing an opportunity for young Jews to learn about modern Jewish culture. The weeklong program, “Tent,” brings together 20 young people aged 21 to 30 in order to…
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Deconstructing an Older Sarah Silverman
Around the middle of Sarah Silverman’s new HBO comedy special, “We Are Miracles,” the famously long-necked comedian tells a 39-member audience at Los Angeles’s Largo nightclub about a recent study done by the University of North Carolina, in which it was discovered that “9/11 widows give great hand jobs.” The audience laughs, and laughs again,…
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Why Bambi Is the Most Jewish Deer in Disneyland
What could be more Jewish than an animated, doe-eyed fawn gallivanting around the forest with pals Thumper the hare and Flower the skunk? The question may sound ridiculous, but it becomes more serious when you consider the release date of the film “Bambi” — August 13, 1942. And then there are the hunters and forest…
The Latest
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Why Thanksgivukkah Is a Portmanteau — and What That Means
Given all the hoopla surrounding it, it’s surprising that only one reader has written in about “Thanksgivukkah,” the word coined for this year’s coinciding of Thanksgiving dinner with the first night of Hanukkah. The reader is Amy Mintz of Sugar Hill, N.H., who complains: “This is such an assimilated-sounding combination! And it’s hardly a combination….
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Beloved Israeli Director Shemi Zarhin Tries His Hand at Fiction
● Some Day By Shemi Zarhin, translated by Yardenne Greenspan New Vessel Press, 450 pages, $16.99 The director and writer of some of the most memorable and honored Israeli films, including “Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi,” “Aviva My Love” and “The World Is Funny,” Shemi Zarhin creates a world in his movies. And now, in his first…
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The Only Jewish Kid in His Moscow Class
Once, during a literature lesson in sixth or seventh grade, in around 1981, a note was passed to me from the back of the classroom. It was a sheet of paper ripped from a composition book. “To the Jew from the Russians” (“evreiu ot russkikh”) was scribbled in Russian on the front of the folded…
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United Hebrew Charities Catches Man Who Abandoned Family
1913 •100 years ago Caught in His Own Net Adolph Rosenbaum, a cigar maker from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, abandoned his wife and children and disappeared about a year ago. Left in conditions of penury, his wife appealed to the United Hebrew Charities for financial help, and also contacted the National Desertion Bureau in order…
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Music Arik Einstein, Singing ‘Father’ to Millions, Leaves Decades of Memories
It may be the ultimate testament to Arik Einstein, the Israeli pop singer who died November 26 at age 74, that there won’t be an ultimate testament. He was too deeply enmeshed in the fabric of too many Israelis’ ordinary lives for any one tribute to capture him. He was Israel’s most beloved entertainer and…
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World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor Celebrates 110th Birthday
Alice Herz-Sommer, the Czech pianist and Theresienstadt concentration camp survivor, celebrated her birthday on November 26th. A Londoner for three decades, Herz-Sommer had received the tribute of “Everything is a Present,” a 2009 film by the noted British documentarian Christopher Nupen who has also worked on films starring Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman,…
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Hungary Designer Has a Little Dreidel (and a Menorah)
Andras Daranyi reached across the table in one of the trendy cafes in Budapest’s old downtown Jewish district and fondly patted an unusual-looking object about the size of a bowling ball. Made of dark-gray concrete, the object had eight sides, each an equilateral triangle. Each triangle was perforated by an arrangement of between two and…
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Arik Einstein, Voice of Good Old Israel, Dies at 74
(Haaretz) — A part of Israel passed away on Tuesday night. A slice of its soul has departed. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, possibly millions, have lost a close personal friend, an intimate lifelong companion. A voice of Israel – the voice of Israel, for many – will sing no more. His name is Arik…
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