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 The Love of Pure Khazones
Few outside the world of cantorial music know the name Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, but when Itzhak Perlman listens to the Brooklyn-based cantor’s tenor, he gets goose bumps. Perlman, who has had a love of khazones, synagogue chants, since his boyhood in Tel Aviv, compares Helfgot to Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, two opera giants with…
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Books Randy Cohen on Being Secular and Getting Fired
For 614 weeks over a 12-year period, Randy Cohen was a latter-day Dear Abby. As author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, he provided a moral compass for readers facing quandaries large and small. He collected many of those efforts in a just-published book, “Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics…
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Books Author Blog: The Book of Jonah
Shani Boianjiu’s debut novel, “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid,” 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: The characters in my novel, “The People of Forever Are Not…
The Latest
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‘Telegraph Avenue’ of Broken Dreams
Telegraph Avenue By Michael Chabon HarperCollins, 480 pages, $27.99 It’s like Anton Chekhov said about a pistol appearing in the first act: If a hugely pregnant woman appears in the opening pages, you just know the water will break before you reach the end. That inevitability forms the through-line or engine, the great humming machine…
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She’ll Always Have ‘Paris’
Paris: A Love Story By Kati Marton Simon & Schuster, 208 pages. $24 ‘I am loved, therefore I am. That was me. Now who am I?” That is the question Kati Marton sets out to answer in “Paris: A Love Story,” the author’s frank, captivating memoir of her remarkable lovers, friends and family, and how…
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The Yiddish Quran
There was an unusual event in Haifa the other day. Muhammad Sharif Odeh, the leader of the Israeli community of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, announced the 25th anniversary of an Ahmadiyya-sponsored translation into Yiddish of selections from the Quran. Called by Haifa’s Jewish mayor, Yona Yahav, the “Reform Jews of Islam,” the Ahmadiyyas, who…
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A Womb With a Point of View
Vagina: A New Biography By Naomi Wolf Ecco/HarperCollins 400 pages, $27.99 Vaginas are getting a lot of ink in the news these days. Everyone seems to have an opinion about them, especially folks who do not have one. In August, Rep. Todd Akin, a Missouri Republican, made his infamous comments about the vagina’s seemingly supernatural…
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Books Author Blog: The Real Flavor of the Streets
Earlier this week, Steve Stern wrote about embarking on a quixotic journey and his decision to teach creative writing in Vilnius. 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: There’s a district in…
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Music Lisa Loeb’s Kids’ Jew-ish Names
Back in her ‘90s heyday, Lisa Loeb was responsible for the tortoiseshell-cateye-glasses trend, and of course for being the first-ever unsigned artist to have a No. 1 single. (That would be the super-addictive “Stay” from the “Reality Bites” soundtrack.) Now that Loeb is a semi-retired wife and mom, she’s setting a different kind of trend….
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Books Author Blog: Illusions and Remembering
Yesterday, Steve Stern wrote about his decision to teach creative writing in Vilnius. 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: I liked to sit sipping coffee in the tall kitchen window of…
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Books The Feminist Canon Just Got Really Good
Like many Americans, particularly those who share my gender, I’ve spent a good deal of my spring and summer immersed in new books by (and mostly for) women. But I want to take a break from buzzing about the erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” and the creepy thriller “Gone Girl” to talk about two…
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