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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Dishing Some Linguistic Dirt
Lewis Kupperman writes, “There is a Yiddish expression meaning to make mincemeat of someone or something that sounds like to make ‘ushenblottie,’” and he wants to know if I’m familiar with it. Mr. Kupperman’s “to make ushenblottie” is Yiddish makhn ash un blote — that is, “to make ashes and mud” of a person or…
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Escape from Williamsburg
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots By Deborah Feldman Simon & Schuster, 272 pages, $23 Deborah Feldman’s memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” begins with Feldman describing her father, a mentally disabled Hasid employed by pitying community members to preform simple tasks, like picking up people from the airport. Sometimes…
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Books The Red Devil
Earlier this week, Matthew Shaer wrote about the genesis of his book, “Among Righteous Men,” and divisions within the Crown Heights community. 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:…
The Latest
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Looking Back: February 10, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward A resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Freda Levinson, 19, decided to get revenge on her ex-boyfriend, William Kaufman, also from the Lower East Side, after, she claimed, he reneged on a promise to marry her. After hearing the bad news, Levinson bought a bottle of carbolic acid and…
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Thou Shalt Suspend Disbelief
Tourists thronged New York City’s Times Square over the holiday period. Some had come to take in the sights, others a Broadway play and still others the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were to be found in temporary residence at Discovery Times Square (“More than a museum”), on West 44th Street. Visit this “once-in-a-lifetime-exhibit”; “Experience firsthand…
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Books A House Divided
Matthew Shaer is the author of “Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights.” His 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: In my last…
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Let’s Sing Another Song, Leonard
I was not expecting “Old Ideas,” Leonard Cohen’s first album of new material in eight years, to be any good. Am I alone? It does seem that way. The mood surrounding the record — as well as the first round of reviews — has been reverential, and for good reason. Cohen, now a grizzled but…
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Images of Occupation at Sundance
Selling out a screening or getting a standing ovation at Sundance is hard enough for a seasoned filmmaker, let alone for a farmer from the West Bank. But director Emad Burnat, from the village of Bil’in, brought Park City, Utah, to its feet with his debut documentary about his family’s life beyond the security barrier…
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What’s So Jewish About Test Prep?
In the early days of Princeton Review, when roughly half of the test prep company’s employees were Jewish, it was often Jews vs. goyim in the annual football game. “They were taller, but we were faster,” said John Katzman, co-founder with Adam Robinson. Katzman also recalled “Talmudic” discussions on how to schedule tutoring sessions around…
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X-Rated Dispute in Knesset
This week’s column, you should be warned, is X-rated. Don’t blame me for it. You can blame firebrand Anastasia Michaeli and gasoline-tongued Ahmad Tibi, both members of Israel’s Knesset. Soviet-born Michaeli — an ex-telecommunications engineer and fashion model who married an Israeli, immigrated to Israel in 1998 and converted to Judaism — belongs to Foreign…
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A Little Story About A Coat
Translated by Miriam Hoffman and Beverly Koenigsberg This story originally appeared in the Forverts of February 20, 1987. You really need to find a way to cope with our harsh northern winters. Foremost, Lady Luck must help you land a good winter coat, and to my delight she did just that for me last year….
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