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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Books The Diarist
Leigh Stein’s debut novel, “The Fallback Plan,” is now available. Her blog posts are being featured this week 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: Before I’d settled on acting or writing, my greatest aspiration was simply…
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‘Hugo’s French Connection
It’s déjà vu all over again at the Academy Awards: The nation that gave us motion pictures stands to sweep the Oscars, which will be broadcast February 26. Leading the new wave of French-made or French-inspired movies this year is, of course, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” with 11 nominations. Through the use of new technologies like…
The Latest
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Who Put the J (and -Ew) in Jew?
Philip Brogadir writes: “As a Jew (getting my bona fides in early), I’ve often had negative reactions to hearing or reading the word ‘Jew’ of the type you describe in your January 20 column. The reasons you give for this reaction are all well taken. However, you omit one that is, in my opinion, as…
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Jewish Roots of the New Testament
‘It is evil for Christians to try to convert Jews with this dreck. Why don’t you people leave us in peace?” So wrote one Amazon reviewer of the new “Jewish Annotated New Testament” (Oxford University Press, 2011), a magisterial volume of Jewish commentaries, essays and scholarly notes on the second half of the Christian Bible….
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Making a Killing From Communication
The Flame Alphabet By Ben Marcus Knopf, 304 pages, $25.95 In the beginning, there was language and also a tree of knowledge. Then human beings got wind of all that, and things started to come undone. We in the digital age are constantly bemoaning the breakdown of real communication and the impending demise of the…
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Books Keeping Doubt Alive
Earlier this week, Eric Weiner wrote about carrots, fish, and Jewish souls and the pleasures of spiritual travel. His blog posts have been featured this week 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: Like most people, I…
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Film Festival Focuses on Disabilities
Evan Sneider, an alumnus of community theater and student films, got his big break in 2009 when a high school classmate, now a filmmaker, cast him as a lead in the feature film “Girlfriend.” The titular girlfriend is a cash-strapped single mother caught between a violent, volatile boyfriend and a newly flush suitor, played by…
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Looking Back: February 17, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward When Barnett Nemeth went to open his safe in his jewelry store on Manhattan’s Broome Street, he was surprised when two men rushed him, held a revolver to his head and said: “Hands up! We want a look in that safe.” While one of the bandits rifled through the…
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Do Jews Curse the Christians?
Cursing The Christians? A History of the Birkat Haminim By Ruth Langer Oxford University Press, 388 pages, $74 During a year studying medieval liturgical manuscripts, Ruth Langer found herself drawn to places where words, phrases and even a whole paragraph had been erased or, as she explained in an email to the Forward, “literally blacked…
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It’s ‘Kosher’ To Accept Real Jesus?
Kosher Jesus By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Gefen Publishing House, 263 pages, $26 Despite Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s best efforts in “Kosher Jesus,” some Jewish teachers and their messages are not worth reclaiming. Whether because of their fanciful interpretations of the Bible or their odd religious agendas, they are best ignored. I have in mind not Jesus…
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Books Yiddish Stories Not Lost in Translation
The Association of Jewish Libraries Guide to Yiddish Short Stories By Bennett Muraskin Ben Yehuda Press, 79 pages, $14.50 The title of this small but useful book might have been lengthened to include “in the English language,” but the point is taken. We are now in a veritable golden age of translation, though the “golden”…
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