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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Books
Forward Fives: 2012 in Poetry
In the annual Forward Fives selection we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in music, performance, exhibitions, books and film. Here we present five of our favorite works of poetry of 2012. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. This year, among the…
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Documenting The Other Kindertransport
In 2009, a group of school children in the Czech town of Velký Beranov was doing research for a project called “Neighbors Who Disappeared” — an effort to get kids to understand all those who are missing from their towns, their cities, their world. Together the kids discovered the strange, melancholy story of Helena Böhmová:…
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The Other Kindertransport
One hundred and fifty: a number simultaneously enormous and tiny. One hundred and fifty Czech Jewish teenagers left behind everything and everyone — the lives they’d known, their parents, their siblings, their grandparents and aunts and uncles. One hundred and fifty Czech teens, selected by the Jewish Agency’s Youth Aliyah and the Denmark branch of…
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Books Author Blog: Sayings With Which I Disagree
Yesterday, Harry Brod wrote about why he always has a valid passport. 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: “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” I first…
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Broken Glass And Insufficient Metaphors
November 9–10, 1938, lives tragically in historical memory for the coordinated attacks against Jews in Germany and Austria by paramilitary forces and locals. A new book, “The Night of Broken Glass: Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht,” argues that to sum up events in which some 400 Jews were murdered “or driven to suicide,” and 30,000 were…
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Books Author Blog: Passport to Citizenship
Harry Brod is a professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of Northern Iowa and the author of “Superman Is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way.” 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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Books Author Blog: On Ritual and Justice
Earlier, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz wrote about taxation in America and Hurricane Sandy, FEMA, and the Need for Big Government. 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: The great French Jewish philosopher and…
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I Think I’ve Been Sedated
A few months ago I found myself climbing the cement stairs of a converted industrial building in Brooklyn to attend an informal Friday night service in someone’s loft. A large group had gathered — 30 people at least, all in their 20s and 30s. We sang zemiros, ate vegetarian pasta salad and drank rye out…
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The Sheynest Punim of Them All
When does a word borrowed from another language officially become a member in good standing of American English? Some might say that this happens only when it is included in the dictionaries. Yet new dictionaries are not published every day, and even when they come out, they often overlook words that have been regarded for…
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The World That Mariam Said Loved
Imagine that, instead of a Middle East ruled by tyrants, riddled with militants and ruined by war, the region was a model of cosmopolitan tolerance and sophistication, where people of all creeds and faiths live in harmony. In her memoir, “A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman” (Nation Brooks), published in English…
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Harold Feinstein’s Coney Island State of Mind
At age 81, the photographer Harold Feinstein is developing cataracts. But he’s been wearing glasses since he was a boy, and he scoffs at the idea of surgery. “Imagine someone telling me I’ll see better,” he said with an impish grin beneath his flowing white beard. Feinstein is not one for false modesty. Early in…
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