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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Why Sukkot is called the ‘holiday of the harvest’ — even though there isn’t any harvest
In the Bible, the prayer book and Jewish tradition, the holiday of Sukkot — the “Feast of Booths” or “Feast of Tabernacles,” as it is generally referred to in rather archaic English — also has an accompanying epithet: ḥag ha-asif, the Feast or Holiday of “Gathering” or (as the King James and many other English…
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Getting Schooled in Poetry by Robert Pinsky
● Singing School: Learning To Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying With the Masters By Robert Pinsky W.W. Norton & Company, 240 page, $25.95 In approaching Robert Pinsky’s new book on how to write poetry, unsuspecting students may be eager for trade secrets, but it will shortly dawn on them that Pinsky has a different…
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‘Shtisel’ Fills a Void in Israeli Television
The creators of the new hit Israeli Hebrew-language TV drama series “Shtisel,” which debuted earlier this summer on the YES cable channel, are pleased by the series’s popularity; however, they say they are not surprised by it. The unique appeal of “Shtisel” is as much about what it is not as it is about what…
The Latest
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Books Malamud’s ‘Refugee’ at 50
A version of this post originally appeared on Ron Hogan’s Beatrice blog. I owe my discovery of Bernard Malamud’s “The German Refugee” — published 50 years ago Saturday — to “The Best American Short Stories of the Century,” which joined my bookshelf shortly after its release. And although I don’t normally use the word “frisson”…
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Jewish Foundation for Culture To Shutter Next Year
Does Jewish culture need a central address in order to thrive? Not according to the people who work there. The Foundation for Jewish Culture, a New York-based organization that has given more than $50 million to Jewish scholars and artists since 1960, will cease its operations in the coming year. According to the FJC’s president…
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Paying Tribute to Dr. Eugene Braunwald, Pioneer in Medicine
● Eugene Braunwald And the Rise of Modern Medicine By Thomas H. Lee Harvard University Press, 400 pages, $35 The degree to which our contributions are a product of our era and the people surrounding us as opposed to our own initiative and innovation is usually difficult to discern. But Dr. Eugene Braunwald’s contributions to…
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Dara Horn Offers Her Own ‘Guide For the Perplexed’
● A Guide for the Perplexed By Dara Horn W. W. Norton & Company, 352 pages, $25.95 In Dara Horn’s first novel, “In the Image,” published in 2002, Rosenthal, an elderly Jewish immigrant, tells young Jason about crossing the Atlantic in steerage. When the ship finally approached the Statue of Liberty, passengers were so eager…
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Searching For Jews in British Children’s Literature Beyond the Stereotypes
● Jews and Jewishness in British Children’s Literature By Madelyn Travis Routledge, 200 pages, $125 American book mavens who have delighted in growing up reading works by zesty authors who have a strong sense of Jewish identity, such as E. L. Konigsburg and Maurice Sendak, should be aware that readers in other countries are not…
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Books How Nicholas Sparks Came To Write His First Jewish Characters
‘I sometimes think to myself that I’m the last of my kind.” And thus begins “The Longest Ride,” Nicholas Sparks’s latest novel. Sparks has written seventeen novels, eight of which have already made it to the silver screen. What makes this Nicholas Sparks novel different from all other Nicholas Sparks novels? Well, the speaker continues:…
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May You Be Inscribed in the Book of Life for 5774
Kotvenu b’sefer he-ḥayyim, “Inscribe us in the Book of Life,” Jews pray in the days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. “May you be written down and inscribed for a good year,” they say to each other. No concept or phrase is more associated with the High Holy Days than that of a divine “book”…
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Feeling the Spirit at Long Island’s Oldest Jewish Congregation
Now and again, I find myself in a synagogue that really tugs at my heart. The last time that happened was six years ago, when I first came upon the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in downtown Washington, D.C., or, to use its original name, Congregation Adas Israel. This time, the synagogue that caught my…
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