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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Was Composer Richard Wagner Actually Jewish?
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. 100 Years Ago 1913 While it is well known that the great composer Richard…
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How Did Ed Koch Do It?
Ed Koch thinks Andrew Cuomo is a schmuck. He says so in an aside caught on camera by the makers of “Koch,” an excellent new documentary about the former New York City mayor that opens February 1 in New York. Cuomo’s specific offense is unclear: It’s election night in 2010, and he’s just been declared…
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Books How Some Jews Live
Earlier this week, Ilie Ruby wrote about the idea of bashert. 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: I always begin like this, with Irv, my grandfather, and then I describe him,…
The Latest
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War Is (Beautiful) Hell
‘Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War and the Holocaust,” on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust through the first week of April, is a must-see exhibition of beautiful photographs taken by Soviet Jewish photojournalists during World War II. Organized by historian David Shneer and curator Lisa Tamiris…
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A Klezmerizing Performer
As decades roll, it is becoming increasingly clear that the klezmer revival of the late 1970s was neither a fleeting fad nor a bout of nostalgia; it was a serious identity exploration. The longevity and evolution of certain early groups — The Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band — is telling enough. Yet, the most important…
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Books Author Blog: What’s Meant To Be
Ilie Ruby is the author of “The Salt God’s Daughter” and “The Language of Trees.” 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: One of the things that I find most compelling about…
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Finding Tale of Redemption at Auschwitz
● The Thief of Auschwitz By Jon Clinch CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 276 pages, $16 ‘The Thief of Auschwitz” stole my sleep. Jon Clinch’s latest novel, which he has chosen to self-publish, is a page-turner with style. It’s a simpler, quicker read than “Finn,” his impressive first novel, which brilliantly imagined the backstory of Huckleberry…
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Books Debating the Term ‘Concentration Camp’
Earlier this week, Eric L. Muller wrote about the photographer Bill Manbo, mass incarceration and Kodachrome, and asked: What does a concentration camp look like? 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:…
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Michael Winner, Jewish Director of ‘Death Wish’ Action Flicks, Dies at 77
Flamboyant British film director Michael Winner, best known for the hit “Death Wish” series in the 1970s and 80s, died at his London home on Monday. He was 77. In a statement released to the media, his wife Geraldine said: “A light has gone out in my life.” Winner, who reinvented himself in recent years…
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Los Angeles Jewish Boy Helps Ailing Friend — By Writing ‘Chocolate Bar’ Book
Like a lot of kids his age, 6-year-old Dylan Siegel loves coming up with stories. But unlike most kids, he has a best friend with a rare genetic disease. So when Dylan wanted to raise money for a cure for Jonah Pournazarian, 7, who suffers from Glycogen Storage Disease, he decided to do it in…
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The Dilemmas of Andrew Solomon
● Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity By Andrew Solomon Scribner, 976 pages, $37.50 In his ambitious new study of the relationships between exceptional or unusually challenging children and their parents, Andrew Solomon confesses, informs and enlightens with the same capacious sweep that distinguished his last work, “The Noonday Demon:…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Opinion American Jews were played — now what?
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