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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Yoshke of Nazareth
Henry Sapoznik, director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture at the University of Wisconsin, has taken me to task for writing in my July 27 column that the song “Yoshke Fort Avek” was written by the Yiddish performer Aaron Lebedeff during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. Lebedeff, Mr. Sapoznik writes, had nothing to do with…
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Books Author Blog: Self-Surveillance
In this week’s installment of the Visiting Scribe, Joshua Cohen and Justin Taylor exchanged ideas around book promotion, materials of writing, and the devolution of the author. Read Part I here and Part II here.Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog…
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Tangled Up in Jews
It’s deeply ironic that Tanglewood, which is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and one of America’s largest music festivals — was essentially the creation of Jews in a place largely resentful of their presence. During the 1930s in America, hostility to Jews was common, especially in…
The Latest
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Reb Shlomo Meets Nigeria
Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Shlomo Carlebach are not an obvious pairing. The first was a Nigerian musician, political activist and devotee of traditional Yoruba religion who married 27 wives simultaneously, was jailed for his aggressive criticism of the Nigerian government and died of AIDS after a lifetime of inspired rabble-rousing. The second was an American…
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Marvin Hamlisch Changed My Life
When I first heard the music from “A Chorus Line,” I immediately declared it the best musical ever written. This was perhaps a bold claim for a 9 year old to make: I didn’t know who Marvin Hamlisch was, or that the musical had won him the Pulitzer Prize, or that it had been the…
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Books Author Blog: Quality Grumbling
In this installment of the Visiting Scribe,Joshua Cohen and Justin Taylor exchange ideas around book promotion, materials of writing, and the devolution of the author. Read Part One of their exchange here. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For…
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Marvin Hamlisch Was Top of the Pops
When the much-honored screen and stage composer Marvin Hamlisch died suddenly and unexpectedly on August 6, he was serving or had served as principal pops conductor for orchestras in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Dallas, Pasadena, Seattle and San Diego. The Philadelphia Orchestra was also considering Hamlisch for similar duties, having recently fired its longtime Philly Pops founding…
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Self-Hatred as Self-Help
On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred By Paul Reitter Princeton University Press, 176 pages, $26.95 What do we talk about when we talk about Jewish self-hatred? That’s the question Paul Reitter tackles in his new book, “On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred.” After tracing the first appearances of the term “Jewish self-hatred” in interwar Germany,…
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Books Author Blog: A Necessary Evil
In this installment of the Visiting Scribe, Joshua Cohen and Justin Taylor exchange ideas around book promotion, materials of writing, and the devolution of the author. Their 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…
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Tarzan of the Jews
It’s hard to picture Tarzan, the iconic ape-man created by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs, wearing a yarmulke, or yodeling “Hatikvah” instead of his usual jungle cry. But when the 100th anniversary of the jungle king’s 1912 pulp fiction debut, “Tarzan of the Apes,” is celebrated this fall by the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate, it…
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From Azerbaijan to Silicon Valley and Back
Alexander Ilichevsky is a former student of one of Moscow’s top mathematical high schools, and he looks the part. Polite and soft-spoken, with a solid build and boyish features, the Russian author is most noticeable for his careful turns of phrase and his preference for precise definitions. After graduating from boarding school no. 18, affiliated…
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