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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Books Author Blog: Hearing Voices
Daniel Smith’s newest book, “Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety,” is now available. 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: I know a little something about hearing voices. My first book, “Muses,…
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Books Author Blog: The Dangers of Nice
Earlier this week Matti Friedman, a reporter in Jerusalem for The Times of Israel, and author of The Aleppo Codex, wrote about the codex vs. the Kindle and provided a mini-lesson on Jews from Arab lands. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s…
The Latest
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Looking Back: July 27, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 — Arrests continue to be made for the murder of gambler Herman “Beansie” Rosenthal, who was gunned down in front of Manhattan’s Hotel Metropole. Rosenthal had recently been in the news for accusations he made that NYPD vice cop Charles Becker was in cahoots with gamblers and brothel owners all over…
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What ‘Rape Jokes’ Could Learn from Jewish Humor
For weeks, verbal volleys have gone back and forth across the internet, the television airwaves, and now the pages of newspapers over the appropriateness of rape jokes and the role of feminism in humor. It all stemmed from an account on a blog written by a women who went to a stand-up show by popular…
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From Rabbi’s Daughter to World-Shocker
The subject of a new documentary, “Love and Politics,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, actress and director Judith Malina is internationally celebrated for startlingly unconventional theater, such as her 2011 play “Korach: The Biblical Anarchist.” A rabbi’s daughter who turned 86 on June 4, Malina has long been invigorating and scandalizing…
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Books Hidden History of Middle Eastern Jews
Earlier this week Matti Friedman, a reporter in Jerusalem for The Times of Israel, and author of “The Aleppo Codex,” wrote about the codex vs. the Kindle. 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,…
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‘Portnoy’s Prescience
Promiscuous: ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness By Bernard Avishai Yale University Press, 240 pages, $25 ‘Promiscuous: ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness” is a very serious and very funny book about a very serious and very funny book. Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” published in 1969, was not only an instant…
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Books Author Blog: Codex vs. Kindle
Matti Friedman is a reporter in Jerusalem for The Times of Israel, and author of “The Aleppo Codex.” 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: Although it fell, in retrospect, at the…
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The Biggest McMansion of Them All
In an on-camera interview, David Siegel crows that he got George W. Bush elected president. When asked how he did that, the Florida resident declines to give particulars, claiming his actions “might not have been legal.” His wife, Jackie, brags that she’s spent as much as $1 million a year on clothing, including $17,000 on…
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Interfaith Insults
From Jacob Mendlovic of Toronto comes a letter of complaint about “the intense hostility of Haredim,” or ultra-Orthodox Jews, toward gentiles as manifested in such “Jewish n-words” as sheygets (a non-Jewish boy; from Hebrew shaketz, “abomination”); shikse (a non-Jewish girl); orel (an uncircumcised man) and akum (heathen — a talmudic acronym for ovdey kokhavim u’mazalot,…
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Books Author Blog: Dating and Doctors
Earlier this week, Francesca Segal wrote about recasting a classic novel and about being asked the question “Who are your characters REALLY?” 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: It was several…
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