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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Cutbacks on Volunteer Trips Fatally Weaken College Resumés
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… Recent cuts to service trips for Jewish teens may devastate one of the core missions of the Jewish organizational world — getting Jewish students into the best universities. Now, a variety of Jewish not-for-profit organizations are racing to fill the gaps in…
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Backward Looking Back: Glimpses of the Backward Archives
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… 100 years ago 1913 Backward editor Babe Kahan returned from a month-long trip to Europe, during which he visited those “bastions of peaceful civilization” France and Germany, as well as the “delightful” Balkan countries of Serbia and Montenegro. In each community Kahan…
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Lost in Language: Of Dead Dogs, Living Lions & Bifid Uvulae
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… In Kohelet it says, “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” Now quite why the writer of Kohelet wants to be joined to a living dog…
The Latest
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The Partial Pinking of Hamas
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… In a surprise development following its recent endorsement of women rabbis, Hamas announced last week that it is preparing to embrace gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals for new roles in its own community. “We think they would make excellent suicide bombers,”…
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UNESCO Saves Humor From Itself
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… After a long process, UNESCO has declared Jewish jokes as World Heritage Treasures. This follows a similar decision by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization to protect Irish jokes for posterity. UNESCO representative Sven Svensson told the Backward that the…
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Books Ben Katchor and Hand-Drying in America
In today’s installment of the Visiting Scribe, Eddy Portnoy sat down with Ben Katchor to discuss his newest book, “Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories,” which will be published by Pantheon Books on March 5. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author…
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An Air-Conditioned Palestinian State
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… From the world of sport comes a message of hope. The Emir of Qatar has announced that after his country hosts the FIFA soccer world cup in 2022, he will donate the stadiums and related transportation infrastructure to the Palestinian people to…
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Bibi Suddenly Eager To Wash Obama’s Car
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… In an intriguing political development, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent a full afternoon of an important diplomatic trip to the nation’s capital cleaning and polishing President Obama’s car. The Israeli premier denied that political considerations had anything to do with his…
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Philip Roth’s Guide to Old Age
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… Philip Roth, considered by many to be America’s greatest living novelist, recently announced his retirement after a distinguished career in which he authored 31 books, redefined America’s relationship with liver and garnered multiple awards. Now, freed from the constraints of the writing…
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When ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ Made Jewish Oscars History
Sixty-five years ago, in 1948, when the cinematic version of her story, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” received the Oscar for best picture, Laura Z. Hobson was a 47-year-old, divorced, Jewish single mother living in Manhattan. The success of “Gentleman’s Agreement,” which was serialized in Cosmopolitan in 1946, published by Simon & Schuster in 1947 and produced as…
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Books Author Blog: A Rabbi’s Tale
Earlier, Jay Neugeboren wrote about the art of silence. 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: Some years ago, when I was president of Congregation B’nai Israel, in Northampton, Massachusetts, I wrote…
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