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: What’s In a Name?
Jonathan B. Krasner is the author of the National Jewish Book Award winning title “The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education.” Krasner was also a finalist for the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author…
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Conviction, Compassion and Outrage
Hundreds of dialects can be heard in America’s most diverse city, yet New York’s lingua franca is the language of change. Natives or newbies, New Yorkers are known for voicing strong views about why things need to be different. Here, love and hate spur movements, mobilize the masses, draw people into the streets and across…
The Latest
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Jesus: Father, Husband, Family Man
“The Jesus Discovery: The Resurrection Tomb that Reveals the Birth of Christianity” By James D. Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici Simon & Schuster, 272 pages, $27.95 In 1835, David Strauss published “The Life of Jesus Critically Examined,” which debunked the miraculous elements of the New Testament and inaugurated the modern recovery of the “real Jesus.” Strauss…
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Books Author Blog: Tisha B’Av and the Olympic Games
Earlier this week, Dvora Meyers wrote about being an Orthodox Jewish gymnast and the designer of her book cover. 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: What happens when the saddest day…
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Evolutionary Biology After Auschwitz
May 20 marks the 10th anniversary of the death, at age 60, of evolutionary biologist and popular author Stephen Jay Gould. That’s an excellent excuse to relish seven paperback reprints of his work, out last fall from Harvard University Press. Included are “Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History” and “I Have Landed: The…
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Soccer Final Pits Jewish History Vs Jewish Oligarch
The most important game in the world this year, in America’s fastest growing team sport, takes place on Saturday May 19. And, because they don’t have a representative on the field, American Jews may feel a little left out. But, as Alan Rothenberg — who presided over the soccer World Cup in America in 1994…
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Books Author Blog: It Takes Two
Earlier this week, Dvora Meyers wrote about being an Orthodox Jewish gymnast. 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: As a writer, I’ve paid scant attention to the images that accompany my…
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Broiling Mojave Spawns ‘Angry Buddhist’
The Angry Buddhist By Seth Greenland Europa Editions, 400 pages, $16 This year, my wife and I celebrated Passover in the Mojave Desert. In a rented house on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, we had an intimate Seder with friends as the glaring light lowered into dusk. After the meal, we went outside…
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Taking a Second Look at Lillian Hellman
A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman By Alice Kessler-Harris Bloomsbury Press, 448 pages, $30 I don’t know that I have ever read this good a rescue job. Columbia historian Alice Kessler-Harris’s biography of dramatist and screenwriter Lillian Hellman made me feel like a stupid cliché: just another American who knows…
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Looking Back: May 25, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward Twenty-five-year-old Brooklyn resident Rose Moscowitz shot and killed her husband, Morris Moscowitz, after he tried to force her to become a prostitute. Moscowitz was initially a packer at a cigar factory, and her wages weren’t enough for her husband. He told her that he wanted her to sell her…
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Rabbinic Sister Act
There have been countless examples throughout Jewish history of children following parents into the rabbinate. There have even been instances in which two or more siblings, especially male ones, have chosen to become rabbis. But a family in which all three daughters get ordained? There have been no documented cases — until now. The Reform…
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