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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Grappling With Yiddish Words That Punch Above Their Weight
A reader identified as “JA” wants to know: “Does the English word ‘slug,’ as in to slug someone, come from Yiddish shlogn, to hit? They certainly sound very similar.” My thinking about this went through three stages. Stage 1, my immediate reaction, was that “slug” and shlogn — or shlugn, in the Yiddish some of…
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Snatched From Seders To Wash Streets of Vienna
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 illluminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 Morris Lustig, who was sent to death row at Sing…
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Books ‘Go the F**k to Sleep’: The Movie
First there was the viral leaked PDF. Then there was the book. Then there was the audio book narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. And now there’s the movie. America can’t seem to get enough of Adam Mansbach’s “Go the F**k to Sleep,” the picture book for adults that took the country by storm when it…
The Latest
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Why Jews Are Among World’s Happiest People
‘Jewish” and “happy” are words not usually found in the same sentence. But now, being Jewish and being happy are, if a bit tenuously, united at The Jewish Museum in “Six Things,” an exhibit that visualizes in sensuous three-dimensional letterforms what Stefan Sagmeister, one of the world’s most influential graphic designers, has learned about happiness….
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Books Author Blog: What Is the Story?
Earlier this week, Jennifer Gilmore wrote about the overlap between her personal concerns and writerly concerns. 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: “The Mothers” is the first book I’ve written that…
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Harvey Fierstein Gets ‘Kinky’ and Discusses His Jewish Roots
Harvey Fierstein says he had some reservations about adapting the film “Kinky Boots” into a musical. “To do a drag show doesn’t interest me,” he said. “Been there, done that. A show about shoes doesn’t cry out to me. Also, if something [like the original film] is good, why f–k with it? And a musical…
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Books Rothschild Heiress and ‘Miss Havisham of Bebop’
The name “Rothschild” means different things to different people. In 1902, Sholem Aleichem wrote the monologue “Ven ikh bin Rothschild” (“If I Were a Rothschild”), which would be famously turned into the song “If I Were a Rich Man” by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock for “Fiddler on the Roof.” To Sholem Aleichem and generations…
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Playing Jewish Geography From California to the New York Islands
At one point or another, most of us have undoubtedly played “Jewish Geography.” The Jewish equivalent of “six degrees of separation,” the term refers to the kinship ties and social structures that bind one Jew to another. “Jewish Geography” is how we locate ourselves. It’s our very own GPS. But “Jewish Geography” isn’t just a…
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Books Francesca Segal Wins $100K Rohr Prize
Francesca Segal has won the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her novel “The Innocents,” the Jewish Book Council announced today. The award, worth $100,000, is one of the largest literary prizes in the world and is given for fiction and non-fiction in alternating years. This year’s runner-up, who receives $25,000, is Ben…
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Books Author Blog: Lost Stories
Jennifer Gilmore’s newest novel, “The Mothers,” is now available. 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: “The Mothers” is my third novel but it’s the first novel I’ve written that tracks so…
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How Israel’s Fledgling Air Force Took Flight in Independence Fight
Some 65 years after a band of foreign volunteers took to the skies to ensure Israel’s birth and survival, filmmakers are racing to bring their exploits to the screen before the last of the breed passes away. Among the competing producers and their financial backers are such famous names as Spielberg and Lansky. And though…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Fast Forward How the Jewish commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ could help a woman challenge Kentucky’s abortion ban in court
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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Music Can 6 hours of Billy Joel turn critics into believers?
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Opinion What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?
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