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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Genetic Diseases Affecting Ashkenazi Jews
Here is a list of diseases that are often screened for in Jewish couples who are planning to have children because of an elevated risk of carrying a recessive mutation. Researchers have identified many more genetic diseases affecting those of Ashkenazi heritage than those of Sephardic and Mizrahi descent. Among Sephardic Jews more commonality exists…
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Wagner Festival Confronts Controversial Past
On the occasion of the Bayreuth Festival the Grüner Hügel, or Green Hill, that is home to the Richard-Wagner-Festspielhaus was littered with 500 multicolored “mini-Wagners” — garden-gnomelike figurines of the composer, hands raised as if ready to conduct. These cute statuettes share the hill with an outdoor exhibition, “Silenced Voices,” honoring 53 Jewish singers, musicians…
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It’s Jews vs. Jaws This Month on the Discovery Channel
Sunday, August 4, marks the beginning of an important week for all lovers of our finned, fanged friends from the deep: Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week. At 25 years and counting, Shark Week is this country’s longest-running cable programming event. But many might not realize that there’s a Jewish connection to this summer phenomenon, and…
The Latest
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Stacy Horn Preaches To the Choir
IMPERFECT HARMONY: FINDING HAPPINESS IN SINGING WITH OTHERS By Stacy Horn Algonquin, 256 pages, $15.95 During my high school and college years, I used to joke that if there was a church on an Ottawa, Ontario, street corner, I probably sang in it. The joke came back to me while I was reading Stacy Horn’s…
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Books Complication of the Jewish Writer Question
Earlier, Daniel Torday wrote about Jewish novella-writers. Daniel’s novella “The Sensualist” won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in Outstanding Debut Fiction. 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: About three days…
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Books Jews and the Novella
Daniel Torday’s novella “The Sensualist” won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in Outstanding Debut Fiction. His debut novel, “The Last Flight of Poxl West,” will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2015. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog…
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John Zorn Talks Music, Mysticism and the Messiah as He Turns 60
John Zorn’s East Village apartment is like his music: an exceptionally-concentrated, perfectl- composed space celebrating the artistic experience. Thousands of records and tapes and CDs and books, well-ordered, each tug at the visitor’s elbow for attention. For many years, John Zorn — composer, performer, arranger, independent music distributor — has been a major voice in…
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Separating Jesus the Man From the Myth
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth By Reza Aslan Random House, 336 pages, $27 Is it possible to change the tenor of public debate on a subject with a piece of writing? Is it conceivable that the “general reader” still exists, that judgment-suspended individual who picks up a book because she or…
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Raphael Lemkin and Samantha Power’s Problem From Hell
Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin Edited by Donna-Lee Frieze Yale University Press, 328 pages, $35 Ten years ago, Samantha Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “A Problem From Hell,” a history of American inaction in the face of genocide. As she awaits Senate confirmation to be the country’s next ambassador to…
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A Constellation of Theories Regarding the Nebulous History of Orion
Forward reader Ady Manory writes: “I’ve been wondering about the origin of the Hebrew name of the constellation Orion, k’sil. Is it Babylonian? Is it related to the Hebrew month of Kislev? I’d love to find out if the name was a Jewish way of disparaging the accepted mythology of the times.” Mr. Manory is…
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Man Steals Family Photos So Not To Appear Forverts’ ‘Missing Husbands’ Gallery
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 illluminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 1913 •100 years ago Becky Sher Wants a Get Becky Sher of Winnipeg wanted…
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