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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Hofesh Shechter Uses Dance To Unite People
In the opening scene of Hofesh Shechter’s “Political Mother,” a lone man stands onstage, clothed in a pared-down version of Japanese Samurai armor. Soft choral music sets in. The warrior lifts his sword and proceeds to slowly pantomime seppuku, the ritual of honorable suicide. The lights cut to black; the music screeches to silence, and…
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Books Author Blog: From Deli to Cookbook
Noah and Rae Bernamoff are the owners of Mile End deli and the authors of the cookbook “The Mile End Cookbook.” Their 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: We just wrote a…
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Marco Roth’s Frustration and Triumph
● The Scientists: A Family Romance By Marco Roth Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 208 pages, $23 Marco Roth’s childhood was privileged, pampered and precocious. He entertained guests in his family’s duplex on Central Park West by playing the violin and reciting Jean de La Fontaine’s fables in French. Twice a week he visited his psychotherapist….
The Latest
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Patrick Tyler’s Skewed Agenda Sabotages Book
Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country — and Why They Can’t Make Peace By Patrick Tyler Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 576 pages, $35 Veteran Washington Post and New York Times journalist Patrick Tyler has written a comprehensive, well-researched 500-page survey of Israel’s encounters with war and peace from…
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The Jews of Hollywood
Hollywood’s Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema Edited by Daniel Bernardi, Murray Pomerance, and Hava Tirosh Samuelson Wayne State University Press, 224 pages, $31.95 The co-editors of “Hollywood’s Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema” stake their claim in the first sentence of their introduction: “This book sets out to mark a…
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The Streisand Has Two Faces
Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand By William J. Mann Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 567 pages, $30 It was hardly an accident that 22-year-old Barbra Streisand seemed to embody the comedian Fanny Brice so perfectly in the 1964 Broadway musical “Funny Girl.” According to celebrity biographer William J. Mann, the role was deliberately tailored to fit her…
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Looking Back: October 12, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Speaking from the witness stand, Jack Rose dropped a bomb at the Charles Becker trial. Rose, a New York City gambler, said Becker told him that Herman “Beansie” Rosenthal had to be killed. Rose then recounted the story of Rosenthal’s murder in vivid terms. Making matters worse for Becker, a Jewish…
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Looking Back: October 5, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 The infamous gangster Big Jack Zelig, was shot Saturday, October 5, at 8 p.m., on the corner of 14th Street and Second Avenue, as he sat in his car. Zelig, who was scheduled to testify as a major witness in the trial of vice cop Charles Becker, slithered to the floor…
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Looking Back: September 28, 2012
**100 Years Ago 1912 Seven young Jewish girls stood before the magistrate in Essex Market Court, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, on charges of running an illegal gambling ring out of Mrs. Rays’ Hairdressing Parlour, located on Second Avenue between Houston and First Streets. The police raid on the hairdressing parlor caused a huge sensation…
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Looking Back: September 21, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Louis Budinsky, a resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, went straight to the police after having received a letter stating that if he didn’t come up with $100, all his horses would meet an ugly end. Budinsky then received a phone call from the horse poisoners, and he told them that…
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Looking Back: September 14, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Real estate magnate Harris Diamond, recently retired, had become depressed and pessimistic after the death of his wife. His children tried to cheer him up, but without success. Recently he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, on Lexington Avenue. His death was a suicide. Diamond had closed all the windows…
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