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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For Ladino Musicians, World’s A Stage
On July 9, amid rainwater cracks in limestone rock, charcoal ibex painted by prehistoric man and discarded artifacts from Victorian-era picnics, a loose collective of Jewish women will sing songs of the Sephardic Diaspora. Vocalists Sarah Aroeste, Mor Karbasi and Françoise Atlan will perform at the inaugural Gibraltar World Music Festival in the time-formed Cueva…
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Cartoonist Visits Most Contested City
Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City By Guy Delisle Drawn & Quarterly, 320 pages, $24.95 A city so religiously and historically intense that it’s got its own eponymous syndrome for visitors who flip out under pressure, Jerusalem is the unequivocal go-to destination for anyone wanting a look at the world’s epicenter of multi-faith fanaticism. An…
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Rise of the Machines
Gideon Weisz of Boulder, Colo., calls my attention to a recent BBC translation gaffe that has British Jews chuckling. In their comedy “Episodes,” the British television channel’s producers staged a scene in a Jewish cemetery in which there is a tombstone bearing the English inscription: Beloved Husband and Father Yehudi Penzel Dearly Missed Beloved Head…
The Latest
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When Part Is Lost, What of the Whole?
The World Without You By Joshua Henkin Pantheon, 336 pages, $25.95 Leo Frankel is dead. He died on July 4, 2004, while on a reporting trip in Iraq. The action of “The World Without You” takes place over the weekend of his unveiling, in 2005, and while Leo is, in some ways, at the center…
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Books Author Blog: Truth That’s Stranger Than Fiction
Earlier this week, Lois Leveen wrote about what makes a book Jewish. 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: Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. But it can be hard to tell….
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Looking Back: July 6, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Annie Weiss, 16, was dragged before Magistrate Corrigan in Manhattan’s Centre Street Courthouse on the charge that she was the ringleader of a band of young thieves. A few weeks ago, a gang of young boys broke into the Rabinowitz home on 8 Rector Place and stole goods valued at $50….
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Books Author Blog: Pioneering Geneticist Chaim Sheba
IIn “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer wrote about a series of scientists who contributed to our contemporary understanding of Jewishness. This week, he provides a series of short vignettes that describe their contributions about what it means to be a Jew. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite…
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Books Author Blog: Funny, You Don’t Book Jewish
Lois Leveen?s newest novel, ?The Secrets of Mary Bowser,? 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: [![][4]][4] There?s a novel I first read years ago that rang true in…
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Not Your Grandmother’s Grandmothers
The Story of a Life: Memoirs of a Young Jewish Woman in the Russian Empire By Anna Pavlovna Vygodskaia, translated by Eugene Avrutin and Robert Greene Northern Illinois University Press, 202 pages, $22.95 Journal (1918-1920) By Nelly Ptachkina, translated into French by Luba Jurgenson Les Éditions des Syrtes, 267 pages, $29.39 All too often, accounts…
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Books Author Blog: Fighting Anti-Semitism, Genetically
In “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer wrote about a series of scientists who contributed to our contemporary understanding of Jewishness. This week, he provides a series of short vignettes that describe their contributions about what it means to be a Jew. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite…
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The God Who ‘Evenings Evenings’
Harvey Klineman has a question about the Hebrew phrase ha-ma’ariv aravim that occurs at the beginning and end of the opening prayer of the evening service — a phrase that means (referring to God) “who brings on evenings,” although a more literal translation of it would be “who evenings evenings.” Mr. Klineman writes: “Since this…
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