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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Battling Horror With the Absurd
Photographs by an artist who put clock springs and matchsticks in his nose to fool Nazis into mistaking him for an Aryan hang in galleries in the basement of the Art Institute of Chicago. Adjacent to them is an exhibit that includes a 1945 self-portrait by another artist, who is posing with the German eagle…
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Books Q&A: Accordion Author Marion Jacobson
Before Marion Jacobson discovered the accordion, she was a classical music critic for The Washington Post and an academic with a doctorate in ethnomusicology from New York University. But after wandering into Manhattan’s Main Squeeze accordion store in the fall of 2001, she knew she had found a new passion. So, needing to make space…
The Latest
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Books Author Blog: Seeking Fact, Finding the Unknowable
Debra Spark’s newest book, “The Pretty Girl,” 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: In literature, as in life, you may go looking for one thing, only to find…
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A ‘Crazy’ Look at Paris Strip Palace
Frederick Wiseman is one of the few Jewish geniuses of documentary filmmaking. In a career spanning 39 films, he has earned acclaim for portraying the internal dynamics of prisons, high schools, mental hospitals, courts, the military and zoos. In the 1995 film “Ballet,” as well as in his sumptuous 2009 movie “La Danse,” he displayed…
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Dannie Abse Brings Jewish Twist to Wales
Though “What will survive of us is love” comes from his captious contemporary, Philip Larkin, the line might stand for the life and career of Welsh-Jewish poet Dannie Abse. Having turned 88 last September, Abse was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, in the 2012 New Year Honours, “for services…
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From Esperanza to Shprintze
Bert Horwitz writes from Asheville, N.C.: “The outcome of a dispute between me and my wife was: ‘Let’s ask Philologos.’ In Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Tevye the Milkman,’ one of Tevye’s daughters is named Shprintze — a name my wife claimed derived from Latin or Spanish Esperanza, meaning ‘hope.’ I said that there are no Latin- or…
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Books Author Blog: Primordial Slush
Earlier this week, Ramona Ausubel wrote about what she is, a mother, and what she isn’t, an actress. 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: Several years ago at a writing conference,…
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A Poem of One’s Own
A.M. Klein: The Letters By A.M. Klein Edited by Elizabeth A. Popham University of Toronto Press, 504 pages, $85 Those of us involved with Jewish life and culture in the Diaspora must often ask ourselves a fundamental question: Do we view ourselves as one among many minority cultures that comprise our larger society? Or do…
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Cataloguing the ‘Missed Destiny of Death’
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume II Edited by Martin Dean Geoffrey P. Megargee, General Editor Indiana University Press, 2,036 pages, $236 Over the past two decades, a number of essential works have contributed to both our knowledge of the Nazi regime during World War II and its plans to conquer Europe and eventually…
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Was Adolf Hitler Leader or Follower?
Hitler: A Biography By Ian Kershaw W.W. Norton, 1,030 pages, $25.95 Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich By Robert Gerwarth Yale University Press, 336 pages, $35 Heinrich Himmler: A Life By Peter Longerich Oxford University Press, 1,072 pages, $34.95 Those who can, make history; those who can’t, write history; those who can’t write history write…
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Books Author Blog: Mother/Writer
Earlier this week, Ramona Ausubel wrote about why she’s a writer and not an actress. 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 have been a writer for my whole adult life….
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