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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Jakob Dylan Has Been Born Again
Jakob Dylan may have had his fate set in (rolling) stone when his father immortalized him in song when he was still a child. When Dylan, who turns 43 this December, was 5 years old, old man Bob rewrote the Friday night Sabbath blessing over the children, turning it into a folk hymn that became…
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A Very Sussman Hanukkah
As anyone who has ever stood sweating and swearing in front of a spitting-hot pan of oil knows, the Hanukkah tradition of making latkes is hard work. It requires skill, patience, and a well-developed sense of humor. Luckily, Max and Eli Sussman, brothers and chefs living and cooking in Brooklyn, have all three — and…
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Books So You Want to Dress Up as Santa?
Joshua Eli Plaut, PhD, is the full-time Executive Director of American Friends of Rabin Medical, as well as the Rabbi of the Metropolitan Synagogue in Manhattan. His most recent book, “A Kosher Christmas: ‘Tis the Season to be Jewish,” is now available. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish…
The Latest
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How-To Guide to Hanukkah Gingerbread House
As a finishing touch to my gingerbread house this year, I pressed a tiny white mezuza made out of vanilla taffy onto the doorpost and couldn’t help but smirk. My love of the holiday season and of Jewish tradition had reached new and very sugary peaks as my fingers stuck to the royal icing. During…
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Books Author Blog: The Back Story
Debra Band’s most recent book, “Arise! Arise! Deborah, Ruth and Hannah” is now available. Her work in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts draws upon her love of both the manuscript arts, and Jewish tradition and learning. Her 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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Deck The Halls With Boughs of Challah
A Jewish music preservation group sets out to make the definitive Hanukkah compilation and ends up with an album dripping with Christmas cheer. That’s not just a humdrum holiday punch line — it’s also an accurate description of the genesis of the Idelsohn Society’s December release, “‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah: The Musical Battle Between…
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‘Iron Dome’ Has Roots in Zionist Past
If Israel has had a hero in its mini-war with Hamas, it was not, as many commentators have observed, a person, but a surface-to-air anti-missile system known as Iron Dome — or in Hebrew, kipat barzel. With nearly a 90% interception rate of rockets heading for populated Israeli areas from Gaza, Iron Dome, never tested…
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Stephen Spender’s Jewish Roots
For most of his life, London-born poet Stephen Spender (1909–1995) felt close ties to the Jewish people; he himself was one-quarter Jewish (his mother, Violet Schuster, was from a Jewish family originally from Frankfurt), but his 1941 marriage to Natasha Litvin, a pianist from a Lithuanian Jewish refugee family, strengthened the connection. This is affirmed…
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Books Author Blog: Writing About Writing
Earlier this week, David Ebenbach wrote about what makes a creative process and a short story Jewish. 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: The period immediately after your book comes out…
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Nathan Englander Play Explores Stalin-Era Tragedy
Every writer confronts the possibility of failure. There is no guarantee of being read or if read, of hitting the mark. But no writer expects to succeed and still fail, not through any fault of his own, but because his culture has been destroyed, his language suppressed and his readers murdered. Yet that is the…
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Letting Go of Roth
One never knows why another human really does what he does. And as readers, we can’t ever really know why an author makes the decisions he does on the page. Authorial intent is somewhat sacred. All we can do as readers is speculate on the work as it sits, or sings, on the page. But…
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