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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Faster Than A Speeding Tallis
Superman Is Jewish? By Harry Brod Free Press, 240 pages, $25 There has been a little boom, recently, in books about the links between Jews and comic books. Stack up Simcha Weinstein’s “Up, Up, and Oy Vey: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero,” Danny Fingeroth’s “Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews,…
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Books Author Blog: For the Sake of Unification
Earlier this week, Lisa Alcalay Klug wrote about a surprising discovery in Nachlaot and about how her work is informed by her father’s experiences during the Holocaust. 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,…
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Then and Now, Trying to Demystify Kosher Rites
Within the past few months, circumcision and other Jewish rituals such as kashrut, the dietary laws, and shechita, the kosher butchering of animals, have been the subject of considerable attention, much of it condemnatory. But then, that shouldn’t occasion too much of a surprise: For centuries, and continuing into our own day, the corporeal practices…
The Latest
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Books Author Blog: Seeking Connection
Earlier, Lisa Alcalay Klug wrote about how her work is informed by her father’s experiences during the Holocaust. 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: If there is one consistent theme in…
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Books Author Blog: It’s Not All in a Name
Lisa Alcalay Klug’s most recent book, “Hot Mamalah: The Ultimate Guide for Every Woman of the Tribe,” is now available. She is also the author of “Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe,” a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the…
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Erwin Rommel’s Nazi Rebel Role Revisited
Erwin Rommel, the World War Two German field marshal celebrated as the brilliant and humane “Desert Fox”, is portrayed in a new film as a weak man torn by his loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the dawning realisation that he was serving a devil. The drama, due to be broadcast on the public ARD television…
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On Her Majesty’s Semitic Service
It’s hard to imagine anyone less Jewish — or more goyish — than James Bond: He of the shaken-not-stirred-martinis; he who serially beds the blond, buxom “Bond girls”; he who drives the latest, fastest, gadget-equipped sports car. He may be the hero, but he’s no mensch. The United Kingdom newspaper the Daily Mirror recently called…
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Howard Jacobson Takes Aim at Publishing
Zoo Time By Howard Jacobson Bloomsbury USA, 384 pages, $26 Just because most of us don’t fantasize continuously about ditching our wives for our mothers-in-law doesn’t mean it’s not an excellent premise for a novel. In fact, those very images my opening sentence elicits (and, likewise I’m sure, similar ones for fathers-in-law) are probably the…
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Books Comic Books and Country Music
The Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song By Frank M. Young and David Lasky Abrams, 192 pages, $24.95 With a recent issue of Time magazine declaring “The Carter Family” to be one of the seven best comics of 2012, artist David Lasky has ascended to the top tier of Jewish-American comic artists, an august group…
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Half-Jewish On His President’s Side
Arun Chaudhary, the White House’s first videographer, is a free man now — more or less. The man who began working for Barack Obama back in 2007, documenting both Obama’s ascent and his presidency, is leaning back in his chair as he sits in a pub just across the street from New York City’s South…
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Painter Jules Olitski Enjoys a Second Life
It’s hard to explain the feeling one experiences when standing in front of, and contemplating the dynamic movement in, Jules Olitski’s paintings. Picture a beautiful yet quickly fleeting vision of creamer diffusing throughout a cup of coffee. If one freezes the frame when the cloudiness is at its height — just before the dairy explosion…
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