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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Vera Gran’s Biographer Reconsiders the Stigma of Wartime Collaboration
● Vera Gran: The Accused By Agata Tuszynska Translated from the French of Isabelle Jannes-Kalinowski by Charles Ruas Alfred A. Knopf, 320 pages, $28.95 To contemporary American readers, the name Vera Gran may be unfamiliar. But Gran was a celebrated singer, a beauty with an unusually deep voice and a passionate following in Poland and…
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Ancient Tchotchkes Deepen Our Understanding of Jewish Pilgrims
Many of the tourists who trek to Israel inevitably pack for their return flight with a variety of kitschy souvenirs and gifts for friends back home: red “Kabbalah” bracelets; Israel Defense Forces T-shirts; clocks with the Hebrew alphabet; Israeli flag or hamsa key chains. Fourteen centuries ago the props were different, but the business model…
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Books Jewish Resistance and Herschel Grynszpan
Jonathan Kirsch is book editor of The Jewish Journal. His most recent book, “The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris,” was published under the Liveright imprint of W. W. Norton to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. His blog posts are featured on…
The Latest
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What ‘Girls’ Could Learn From the ‘Good Wife’s’ Wife
Two of my favorite television shows ran on Sunday nights this past winter — “The Good Wife” on CBS and “Girls” on HBO — and because I didn’t have time on Sundays, I tended to catch them on demand on Monday nights, back to back. On the surface, these shows don’t have much in common;…
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Man Thinks, God Laughs, a Reader Writes and a Columnist Contemplates
A reader signing herself Goldele asks if I know anything about the origins of the well-known Yiddish proverb “Der mentsh trakht un got lakht,” “A man thinks and God laughs.” The knowledge that the future, whether conceived of as the result of blind fate or of a divine plan, is not under our control is…
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Paper Lauds Jewish National Home
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 After Moses and Rachel Blum moved to New York from San Francisco,…
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Francesco Lotoro’s Mission To Save the Music of European Jews
‘We lament the loss of the treasures of the library at Alexandria, and the great step back in knowledge it entailed. The same thing will happen if we lose the music of the concentration camps. It’s an imaginary library that may never materialize.” Walking the narrow streets of the decaying industrial city of Barletta in…
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Music Church of Scotland Denies Jewish Claim to Land of Israel
A report by the Church of Scotland, published this week, denies any special privilege for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. The church, which in recent years has jettisoned its once philosemitic character, opened a wide rift with the Scottish Jewish community with the report. Among other controversial statements, the report argues that,…
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Books Cutting-Edge Work in the Jewish Community
Dr. Ron Wolfson is Fingerhut Professor of Education at American Jewish University in Los Angeles and a cofounder of Synagogue 3000. His most recent book, “Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community” (Jewish Lights Publishing), is now available. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the…
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David Roskies and Naomi Diamant Guide Readers Through Holocaust Literature
● Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide By David G. Roskies and Naomi Diamant Brandeis University Press, 360 pages, $85 In the preface to “Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide” (Brandeis University Press), which he co-wrote with Naomi Diamant, David Roskies recalls a variety of Holocaust commemorations from his Montreal adolescence. At one Bundist gathering…
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A Son’s Journey Deep Into the Heart of Saul Bellow
● Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir By Greg Bellow Bloomsbury USA, 240 pages, $25 Trying to imagine the literary landscape of the 20th century without Saul Bellow is a tough task. If Bellow hadn’t published “The Adventures of Augie March” in 1953, you would have to reconsider how the entire American Jewish contribution to…
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