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 Partial Pinking of Hamas
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… In a surprise development following its recent endorsement of women rabbis, Hamas announced last week that it is preparing to embrace gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals for new roles in its own community. “We think they would make excellent suicide bombers,”…
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Books Ben Katchor and Hand-Drying in America
In today’s installment of the Visiting Scribe, Eddy Portnoy sat down with Ben Katchor to discuss his newest book, “Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories,” which will be published by Pantheon Books on March 5. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author…
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Philip Roth’s Guide to Old Age
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… Philip Roth, considered by many to be America’s greatest living novelist, recently announced his retirement after a distinguished career in which he authored 31 books, redefined America’s relationship with liver and garnered multiple awards. Now, freed from the constraints of the writing…
The Latest
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When ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ Made Jewish Oscars History
Sixty-five years ago, in 1948, when the cinematic version of her story, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” received the Oscar for best picture, Laura Z. Hobson was a 47-year-old, divorced, Jewish single mother living in Manhattan. The success of “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which was serialized in Cosmopolitan in 1946, published by Simon & Schuster in 1947 and produced as…
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An Air-Conditioned Palestinian State
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… From the world of sport comes a message of hope. The Emir of Qatar has announced that after his country hosts the FIFA soccer world cup in 2022, he will donate the stadiums and related transportation infrastructure to the Palestinian people to…
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Bibi Suddenly Eager To Wash Obama’s Car
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… In an intriguing political development, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent a full afternoon of an important diplomatic trip to the nation’s capital cleaning and polishing President Obama’s car. The Israeli premier denied that political considerations had anything to do with his…
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Books Author Blog: A Rabbi’s Tale
Earlier, Jay Neugeboren wrote about the art of silence. 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: Some years ago, when I was president of Congregation B’nai Israel, in Northampton, Massachusetts, I wrote…
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Books Author Blog: The Art of Silence
Jay Neugeboren is the author of 20 books, including two prize winning novels, two prize-winning non-fiction books, and four collections of award-winning stories. His most recent books are “The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company” (March 2013) and “The Other Side of the World” (December 2012). His blog posts are featured on The Arty…
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Books A Family Like No Other
The Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga By Moyshe Kulbak, translated by Hillel Halkin, introduction and notes by Sasha Senderovich Yale University Press, 304 pages, $25 Near the end of “The Zelmenyaners,” a novel by Soviet Yiddish writer Moyshe Kulbak, one of the younger characters takes the stand to denounce her family. The proceedings are officially about…
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Rebooting The Führer
Although he has been dead for nearly 70 years, Adolf Hitler continues to make headlines. In recent years, the Nazi dictator has become an inescapable presence in Western political and cultural life, serving as a polemical trump card in political debates, a demonic star in feature films, a marketable symbol in advertising campaigns and an…
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Books New Yiddish Dictionary Explores Intracacies of Language
Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary Edited by Solon Beinfeld and Harry Bochner Indiana University Press, 744 pages, $45 The binding of my copy of Uriel Weinreich’s “Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary” broke sometime between my third and fourth semesters studying the language. The beginning Yiddish student can get by with only the glossary in the back of Weinreich’s…
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