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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The Midrashic Achievement of Poet John Hollander
The American Jewish poet John Hollander died on August 17 at age 83. At a 1990s New York literary gathering, I praised his translation of a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Golem.”. Hollander demurred modestly, not adding as he did to the poet Edwin Honig in 1985: “My mother’s family traditionally believes that my…
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First American-Style Liberal Arts College Opens Doors In Israel This Fall
In the most ambitious attempt to import American-style higher education to Israel to date, the country’s first liberal arts college will open its doors this fall. The four-year degree program at the new Shalem College, located on the Jewish Agency’s campus in the East Talpiot neighborhood in Jerusalem, will teach a broad curriculum like those…
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Could a Facebook Group Provide a New Model for Jewish Education?
It all began at 5 a.m. one day in February 2013, in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Va. That’s when Ken Gordon and Yechiel Hoffman realized that the time was ripe for a grassroots overhaul of Jewish education. The two were guests at the North American Jewish Day School Conference,…
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Brooklyn GED Program Seeks To Help Put Haredi Men ‘On the Path’ to Employment
Usher Bixenspan’s regular attire includes a black hat, a black coat and peyes, but for one afternoon in June, he wore a maroon gown, a graduation cap and a big smile. Bixenspan, 20, was part of the first graduating class of B’Derech, an academic program geared toward ultra-Orthodox Jews. The goal of B’Derech — Hebrew…
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Jewish Gap-Year Program Opens in Portland
There are few, if any, options for teens in America who want a Jewish experience during their post-high school, pre-college gap year, but don’t want to spend time in Israel. That was a key incentive for Portland, Ore.-based contracting carpenter Steve Eisenbach-Budner to create Tivnu, the first Jewish social-justice themed gap-year program in the U.S.,…
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Of Susan Sontag, Debbie Harry, Anna Moffo and Wayne’s World
● My 1980s & Other Essays By Wayne Koestenbaum FSG Originals, 336 pages, $16 Why would you read a collection of essays by a critic who writes mostly about artists (of many kinds — filmmakers, painters, poets, singers, etc.) about whom you do not, with a few exceptions, know anything? Maybe because the critic teaches…
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The Resurrection of Chmielnik
About 15 years ago, when he was in his mid-20s, Piotr Krawczyk had a revelation that changed his life; in many respects it also ended up changing the life of Chmielnik, the sleepy little town in South Central Poland where he lives. “I found a book on the history of Chmielnik, and I read it,”…
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Send in the Jewish Clowns (Jugglers and Acrobats, Too)
Grimacing fiercely, muscular arms quivering, Adam Real Man slowly straightens a metal horseshoe as the crowd stares, grinning in disbelief. His feat of strength is spot-on entertainment at the opening night reception of ‘Topsy Turvy: Coney Island Artists and the Amusement Utopia” at the Deutsche Bank’s 60 Wall Gallery. His skills are improbable. Even more…
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Cracking the Ugaritic Code
Forward reader Raffi Bilek has some questions about Ugaritic, the ancient Semitic language, closely related to biblical Hebrew, that was unearthed in archaeological excavations begun in the late 1920s at the ancient site of Ugarit, along the Syrian coast north of Latakia. Mr. Bilek asks: “How do we know that Ugaritic is so similar to…
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The Extraordinary Heroism of Hannah Senesh
Hannah Senesh was a young Hungarian poet and diarist who was captured and executed November 7, 1944, at age 23, by military police after parachuting into Yugoslavia and then entering Hungary to try to smuggle Jews out of the country. Many know of her brave act of enlisting with the British army and the Haganah,…
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Shlomo Carlebach Comes to Broadway in ‘Soul Doctor’ Musical
Almost 20 years after his death, Shlomo Carlebach is still a problem. To some fans, Carlebach was the “Singing Rabbi,” a folk music star who performed alongside Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. To others he was a scholar and a sage, a talmudic genius and a spiritual leader in the tradition of the early…
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