Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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How Jewish Artists Helped Reinvent Chicago
In Chicago, The Spertus Museum has just opened “Jewish Modernists in Chicago,” the seventh chapter in its eight-part series, “Uncovered & Rediscovered: Stories of Jewish Chicago.” This new exhibit focuses on the artistic influence of a group of Jewish artists active in Chicago in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. The entire series is part of…
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For Adeena Karasick, Multimedia Is the Message
This Poem By Adeena Karasick Talonbooks, 128 pages, $19.95 New York Transit system’s Poetry in Motion series are coming back, and commuters are able to stretch their necks towards the MTA-curated chance of momentary transcendence amidst the array of newspapers and magazines, flashing screens of iphones and all manner of other unnamable devices. Adeena Karasick’s…
The Latest
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Spies Who Came In From the Golan
Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service By Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal Ecco 400 pages $27.99 Rescuing the Air France hostages at Entebbe Airport. Capturing Adolf Eichmann and returning him to Israel. Avenging the murder of the Olympic athletes. It’s the stuff of legends — and films. And it has contributed to…
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Feminism Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard
We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy By Yael Kohen Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux 336 pages, $27 In the early 1980s, while I was reporting a story on female stand-ups for Ms. magazine, Adrianne Tolsch, the host at New York City’s Catch a Rising Star, agreed to arrange a special night…
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Books Poetics of Riverdale
When we think of great New York poets — Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman and Laurie Anderson, among others — what they’ve immortalized and exalted have been the streets and energies of Manhattan or, on rare and less transcendent occasions, Brooklyn. The Bronx, when it did appear, has always been something of the…
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Books Author Blog: Double Vision
Earlier, Tehila Lieberman wrote about two of the short stories from her collection “Venus in the Afternoon.” Her 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: Perhaps after I was born, someone sneaked into…
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Books When a Story Is Born Form First
Tehila Lieberman is the author of the short story collection “Venus in the Afternoon.” She is currently completing a novel entitled “The Last Holy Man.” Her 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:…
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In Praise of New Age Judaism
New Age Judaism gets a bad rap. It’s namby-pamby, critics say — indulgent, narcissistic. Maybe it’s not even Jewish. Never mind the fact that the Havurah movement, Jewish Renewal and Neo-Hasidism have significantly shaped mainstream Jewish prayer life (chances are, your mainline synagogue’s Friday night tunes were first sung by a hippie in Birkenstocks) as…
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A Kick in the Pants for Jewish Projects
If you happen to know anyone who’s trying to release an album, produce a play, start a bakery, publish an upstart web magazine or invent a new iPhone app, odds are that you’ve stumbled upon Kickstarter. The website, which launched in April 2009, harnesses the power of social media to funnel money to up-and-coming projects…
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Bigger Question Than Whether To Give
As a professional anti-poverty worker, one of the most frequent questions I am asked by friends and acquaintances is whether to give money to panhandlers. People want to be generous and helpful, but they are worried about potentially facilitating self-destructive behavior or aiding con artists. Given that Jewish tradition tends to rake every social issue…
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Offer Bread Instead of Money
A man asked me for money on my way into a convenience store one night in the fall of my freshman year at Yale University. I didn’t want to give money to anyone who would use it to buy alcohol or drugs. But I also didn’t want to be responsible for a man going hungry….
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