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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Al Goldstein Is Dead — and Our Culture Is a Little Poorer
So Al Goldstein is dead. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about him, but I have to believe that our culture will be poorer without him. Al, if you recall, was the publisher and chief protagonist of the notorious porn magazine Screw. Obscenity isn’t just a description of Screw, it was also the…
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Provocateur Pianist Journeys From Ukraine to Brooklyn and Back
Stuck in his spartan Brooklyn studio on a warm November day, pianist and composer Vadim Neselovskyi seemed a little restless. He had just returned from a six-city tour of Russia and his native Ukraine — a tour on which he and his musical partner, the noted horn player Arkady Shilkloper, packed houses from Moscow to…
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How the Other Half of America Still Lives
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives By Sasha Abramsky Nation Books, $25, 368 pages In 1962, Michael Harrington, a freelance journalist, published a book that hit the American public like a slap in the face. In a prosperous time, “The Other America: Poverty in the United States” described the tens…
The Latest
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Do Jewish Photographers See the World Through a Different Lens?
Looking a bit like St. Peter crucified upside down, nine not-yet-plucked chickens dangle from hooks in a storefront window; the alignment of their bound feet evokes hamsas. There’s no warding off the evil eye for these upturned chickens, whose tail feathers are naughtily exposed, or for the two others, which are violently suspended by their…
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Why Jews With Psoriasis Might Think Twice About Seeking Treatment in Jordan
Years ago, Germans, quite many of them, in fact, would fly from their homeland to the Dead Sea in Israel in order to bathe in the world-famous salty waters. Some did it for recreation, others for fitness, and still others to cure themselves of psoriasis. All was fine and dandy until one day the owner…
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Why Israel Is the Place Where Everyone Knows Your Nickname
Israel, we are told by a recent Associated Press article, is a “notoriously close-knit, informal” society, in which “personal boundaries are thin and everyone seems to meddle in everyone’s business.” One thing that proves this, the article states, is the nicknames by which many Israeli politicians are and have been known to their fellow countrymen….
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Everything About Her Was Grand, Even Her Pettiness
December 14 marks the centenary of the American pianist Rosalyn Tureck. The legacy of Tureck, who died in 2003, is being commemorated with CD releases and a recital dedicated to her at New York’s 92nd Street Y by her student, guitarist Sharon Isbin. Critic Harold Schonberg called Tureck the “high priestess” of Johann Sebastian Bach…
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Woman Held Captive in Saloon Rescued by Jewish Man
1913 •100 years ago Captive in a Saloon “I beg of you, please have pity on me and save me. I am being held captive. I am scared they will kill me. I am next to a saloon. Sarah.” So read a note written in Yiddish, found on an Osborn Street sidewalk in the Brownsville…
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Books Gary Shteyngart’s Star-Studded New Book Trailer
The nebbishy Russian-Jewish character author Gary Shteyngart has cultivated both in his books and in his public persona is back yet again in the humorous book trailer for his upcoming memoir, “Little Failure.” A bunch of Shteyngart’s friends, including James Franco, Rashida Jones and Sloane Crosley, play along with him in the video. The premise…
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NYU Acquires Archive of Legendary Downtown Arts Pioneer
The archive of the late Tuli Kupferberg, a seminal figure in New York’s counterculture scene of the 1960s who died in 2010 at the age of 86, has been acquired by New York University’s Fales Library. Kupferberg’s work, which included poems, songs and cartoons, drew on Jewish sources, from the Yiddish folk melodies appropriated by…
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The Jewish History of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Private Secretary
Ten years after his death, a French Jewish author hitherto celebrated chiefly for making philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre more sympathetic to Jews, is now earning attention for his own works. Benny Lévy, who died in 2003 at the age of 58, is being honored with the posthumous publication of his works, along with homages from students…
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News AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks