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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Looking Back: January 27, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward Police say that the gang of thieves they caught breaking into the large Manhattan pawn shop on Grand Street near Forsyth Street is responsible for a large number of recent break-ins and robberies. They also said that the gang had some of the most advanced safecracking tools they had…
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Books Albert Brooks on Thugs and Presidents
“I wanted to play a villain but couldn’t convince an American director,” Albert Brooks told an audience January 8, his curly hair framing a gentle cherubic face. The Film Society at Lincoln Center was honoring Brooks for his career, including his recent role as a psychopathic Jewish mafioso in the 2011 movie “Drive.” Given his…
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Books Kafka and the Parable
John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly are the editors of “Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka.” On Monday, James Patrick Kelly wrote about a man as puzzling as his stories and today, John Kessel looks at Kafka and the parable. Their blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the…
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LeWitt’s Wisdom
Originally published in the Forward March 15, 1996 “Ask me any question you want and then put it in your own words,” says Sol LeWitt brightly over the phone from Manhattan, where he is spending a snowy day away from his home in rural Connecticut. His easygoing nonchalance is a bit of a surprise —…
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Righteous Gentiles
Exodus 6:2–9:35 Not long ago my niece Shira sent me some comments on the weekly portion in which Moses was saved by Pharaoh’s daughter. She compared the historical events with the life stories of her two grandmothers, who had died at the end of a long, full life after first experiencing a childhood of terror…
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Books Top Israeli Literary Award Goes to Underdog
At a gala ceremony in Tel Aviv January 16, author Haggai Linik joined a select group of literary luminaries when his third novel, “Darush Lahshan” (“Prompter Needed”) was awarded Israel’s Sapir Prize for Literature. Inaugurated in 2000, the Sapir Prize is Israel’s most prestigious literary prize. Awarded by Mifal HaPayis — the National Lottery —…
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Recalling Guns of August and Israel
Born 100 years ago on the Olympian heights of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, her uncle, Henry Morgenthau, served as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury, while her father, Maurice Wertheim, a successful investment banker, was on the War Production Board. Barbara Tuchman’s professional destiny seemed tied even as a toddler to the event that launched…
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Books Kafka: A Man as Puzzling as His Stories
John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly are the editors of “Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka.” Today, James Patrick Kelly writes about a man as puzzling as his stories. Their 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…
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Books Land of the Rising Zun
Yiddish-Japanese Dictionary/Yidish-Yapanish Verterbukh/Idisshu-go jiten Compiled and edited by Kazuo Ueda, with the aid of Holger Nath and Boris Kotlerman Daigakusyorin, 1302 pages, ¥60,000 Rabbi Marvin Tokayer of Great Neck, N.Y., knows from Japan. “In 1969, I was living in Tokyo and I got a telephone call at my house from a guy who was Japanese…
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Persons of (Linguistic) Interest
Forward reader Bill Morris writes a letter about the pejorative associations that some non-Jews who are not at all anti-Semitic have with the word “Jew,” observing, “I have non-Jewish friends who still balk at saying ‘Jew’ — one friend always says ‘Jewish person.’” It’s not only non-Jews. I’ve also occasionally heard American Jews — almost…
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Prime Ribs, Israel: Home Births; ‘Shiksa Song’
By now, you’ve probably never seen the video of Yisrael Beiteinu Knesset Member Anastasia Michaeli throwing water in the face of Raleb Majadele, an Arab-Israeli member of the Labor party. But you probably haven’t seen Noy Alooshe’s artful remix of it: And you may not have seen a commercial that shows where Michaeli might have…
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