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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Dinner with Debbie Friedman
Friedman is our go-to evening soundtrack
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How ‘Hava Nagila’ Became a Global Hit
One day, in the summer of 2008, the question “‘Hava Nagila’ — what is it?” popped into Roberta Grossman’s head. Although she was familiar with the ubiquitous song, she was clueless about its origins. Thus began the filmmaker’s four-year quest to investigate the Jewish standard’s century-and-a-half journey, from Ukraine to YouTube. The result is her…
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Bucky Shvitz in the Memory Box
Click to enlarge. In Bucky Shvitz’s latest adventure, the sociologist for hire is enlisted to help ultra-Orthodox Jews defeat the scourge of the Internet. For Bucky’s first case, click here. Eli Valley is the Forward’s artist in residence for 2011–2012. His website is evcomics.com and you can follow him at twitter.com/elivalley.
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Books Author Blog: Who Are Your Characters REALLY?
On Monday, Francesca Segal wrote about recasting a classic novel. 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’s amazing how many North Londoners have taken me aside in a furtive, conspiratorial kind…
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Looking Back: July 20, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 After dozens of detectives searched high and low for Bronx resident Nathan Schwartz, the main suspect in the murder of 12-year-old Julia Connors, the suspect was found dead from gas asphyxiation in a room on Chrystie Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Disguising himself as Max Hershkovitz and claiming to be…
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Lou Reed’s Return to Dark Roots
“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to…
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No Straight Path From Dogma to Dissent
Vasily Grossman has received many well-deserved tributes as a dissident writer who dared state what is now the obvious — that when reviewing the wreckage inflicted upon humanity by such dictators as Stalin and Hitler, there are more similarities than differences to be found in their legacies. Paying tribute to this conclusion, and to the…
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Books Author Blog: Recasting a Classic
Francesca Segal’s debut novel “The Innocents” is now available. 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 would never have set out to recast a classic, Pulitzer-winning American novel — it seemed…
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The Liberation of Helène Aylon
Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist By Helène Aylon The Feminist Press, 350 pages, $29.95 Walking through the “Too Jewish?” exhibit at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum back in 1997, surveying the artistic commentaries on popular tropes of American Jewish culture — big noses, Barbra Streisand,…
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How To Train a Hebrew-Speaking Dog
Cheryl Krushat writes: “We are about to adopt a female puppy, to whom my son would like to teach Hebrew commands. My son was given the impression that Israeli search and rescue dog handlers he met while he was in the U.S. Army gave commands in one gender form, regardless of the dog’s sex —…
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Where Have All the Nurses Gone?
One of my favorite television programs is “Nurse Jackie,” which casts a rueful eye on the complicated life of an emergency nurse in a contemporary urban hospital. My husband’s formidable great-aunt, Vera Libo Grinspoon, was a nurse, too — a head nurse at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital in the years leading up to the birth of…
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