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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Remembrance of Jews’ Past
It was 30 years ago that Yosef Yerushalmi’s” Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory” was first published. The shortest book by Yerushalmi, a prolific professor of Jewish history at Columbia University until his death in 2009, it has had the longest reach. The issues raised in the book, Yerushalmi suggested, are not “necessarily confined to…
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An Agnostic Equation
When it was revealed in 2007 that Mother Teresa — widely regarded as a bastion of faith — doubted her religious beliefs, the public got a rare glimpse of a tormented, and distinctly human, life of paradox. The publication of Mother Teresa’s written communications exposed “a startling portrait in self-contradiction,” in which her private spiritual…
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Books Life During Wartime
The People of Forever are Not Afraid Shani Boianjiu Hogarth, 352 pages, $24 One interesting thing about a 70-year war is that, for those fighting it, it’s no longer interesting at all. Violence is just another form of monotony. Exhausted and dull of spirit, the soldier tries to keep herself awake “with sex, with hurt,…
The Latest
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Books Author Blog: Writing in a Foreign Language
Earlier this week, Shani Boianjiu explored the book of Jonah. 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 was born and raised in Israel, and my novel, “The People of Forever Are…
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Looking Back: August 17, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Police in Newark, N.J., have arrested a number of figures in a major check-kiting scheme. Morris Lubin, Jacob Lubin and Samuel Freedman, all Newark residents, were arrested after being followed by detectives. One of their gang, who apparently noticed the detectives who were tracking them, managed to slip away; the person…
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Looking Back: August 10, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Mrs. Sadie Teitelbaum and her brother, Benjamin Silver, have been indicted for the murder of one Leo Scamen in Brooklyn. Teitelbaum and Scamen ran a restaurant on Surf Avenue in Coney Island. Scamen was found just outside the restaurant, dying of a gunshot wound. As Scamen was rushed to the hospital,…
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For The Love of Pure Khazones
Few outside the world of cantorial music know the name Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, but when Itzhak Perlman listens to the Brooklyn-based cantor’s tenor, he gets goose bumps. Perlman, who has had a love of khazones, synagogue chants, since his boyhood in Tel Aviv, compares Helfgot to Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, two opera giants with…
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Books Randy Cohen on Being Secular and Getting Fired
For 614 weeks over a 12-year period, Randy Cohen was a latter-day Dear Abby. As author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, he provided a moral compass for readers facing quandaries large and small. He collected many of those efforts in a just-published book, “Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics…
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Books Author Blog: The Book of Jonah
Shani Boianjiu’s debut novel, “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid,” 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: The characters in my novel, “The People of Forever Are Not…
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‘Telegraph Avenue’ of Broken Dreams
Telegraph Avenue By Michael Chabon HarperCollins, 480 pages, $27.99 It’s like Anton Chekhov said about a pistol appearing in the first act: If a hugely pregnant woman appears in the opening pages, you just know the water will break before you reach the end. That inevitability forms the through-line or engine, the great humming machine…
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She’ll Always Have ‘Paris’
Paris: A Love Story By Kati Marton Simon & Schuster, 208 pages. $24 ‘I am loved, therefore I am. That was me. Now who am I?” That is the question Kati Marton sets out to answer in “Paris: A Love Story,” the author’s frank, captivating memoir of her remarkable lovers, friends and family, and how…
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