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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A.B. Yehoshua Looks Back at His Country and Art
● The Retrospective By A.B. Yehoshua Translated from the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 336 pages, $26 In A.B. Yehoshua’s latest novel, an aging Israeli film director is invited to Spain for a retrospective of his life’s work. The trip engenders a kind of journey backward in time for the director, Mr. Moses,…
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Documentary Sheds Light on Andre Gregory, Star of ‘My Dinner With Andre’
“My Dinner With Andre” is a movie I like to re-watch every so often just for the pleasure of rethinking certain thoughts: Can theater create life-changing experiences, or does it confirm our ideas about the world? Are we ever able to be ourselves, or do we merely act out social roles? Does comfort lull us…
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For D.A. Mishani’s Hero, Police Work Is a Dull Gig
● The Missing File By D.A. Mishani Translated from the Hebrew by Steven Cohen Harper, 304 pages, $25.99 According to his author bio, D.A. Mishani (those are his initials, not his job title) is an editor of Israeli fiction and crime literature at an Israeli publishing company. He is also “a literary scholar specializing in…
The Latest
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Understanding Pope Francis’s Surprising Affinity For Jewish Art
Gallery 395A is tucked away in a corner on the third floor of the Art Institute of Chicago’s modern wing. After passing works by Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti and Salvador Dalí, viewers enter Gallery 395, which features a glass wall overlooking Lake Michigan and is packed with Constantin Brâncusi, Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore sculptures….
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The Little-Known Stars of Jewish Baseball
Known as the “Iron Batter,” Lipman Pike was one of the earliest baseball stars. Playing for the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1860s, Pike was a power hitter at a time when home runs were rare. And he was one of the first paid players — $20 a week. He is also widely noted as the…
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Anti-Semitism Sweeps Poland and 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 illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 Anti-Semitism has washed over Poland like a plague. It has poisoned minds,…
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How the Vilna Gaon Became More Modern Than Moses Mendelssohn
●THE GENIUS; ELIJAH OF VILNA AND THE MAKING OF MODERN JUDAISM By Eliyahu Stern Yale University Press, $45, 336 pages Would you confuse Moses Mendelssohn and the Vilna Gaon, sometimes called the fathers, respectively, of Reform and Orthodox Judaism? Certainly not if you had seen their pictures. It’s hard to mistake Mendelssohn, with his clean-shaven…
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Was Baseball Great Hank Greenberg Even Braver Than Sandy Koufax?
● Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes By John Rosengren New American Library, 400 pages, $26.95 On October 6, 1965, Sandy Koufax sat out the first game of the World Series in observance of Yom Kippur. By putting the holiest day of his faith before the most important event of the most popular sport in…
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Books Author Blog: Beyond Words
Earlier, Boaz Yakin wrote about empathy and conflict. His 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: In New York City, in our Upper West Side apartment, my little brother and I watched my…
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Books Author Blog: Empathy and Conflict
Boaz Yakin’s most recent graphic novel, “Jerusalem: A Family Portrait,” illustrated by Nick Bertozzi, will be published later this month. His 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: It seems to me that…
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The Gospel According to British-Jewish Author Naomi Alderman
● The Liars’ Gospel By Naomi Alderman Little, Brown and Company, 320 pages, $25.99 It is odd that in a media-saturated time when people seem unable to remember important events that happened last week, much less the decades-long story of how we got into the economic and political mess we’re in, historical storytelling flourishes. Whether…
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