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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Dead Sea Scrolls Come to Times Square
“Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times,” which opened on October 30 at the cavernous Discovery Times Square exhibit space in New York, touts itself as showcasing “the largest and most comprehensive collection of Holy Land artifacts ever organized.” Indeed, a more accurate title for this Bible-themed behemoth of a show, produced in…
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Living With And Without Revered Maid
The other night I dreamed that my parents, siblings and I were sitting in the sukkah, making polite conversation with our guests, when the sukkah’s rickety wooden walls were breached by the high-pitched and insistent cry of my mother’s name: “Al-ice, Al-ice.” My mother, reddening slightly, got up from the table with all the dignity…
The Latest
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Jews Who Died Fighting in Red Army
On May 9, 1995 — 50 years after the end of World War II — I stood among a celebratory crowd in a provincial Russian town and glanced over to see a war veteran pointedly scoop a palmful of water out of a puddle. The veteran drank as if it were the finest water he…
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Books Girls Celebrating Bat Mitzvah, Around the World
My Dear Sweet Daughter: We’ve come a long way in making our place in the synagogue. When I was a little girl I once told my grandfather—my very old-fashioned Abuelo — that I wanted to be a rabbi. “That,” he said to me, “is very ugly.” He said the word in Spanish—fea. I despaired. The…
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Looking Back: November 18, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward • West Point military academy student Joseph Izrael has been expelled for “poor behavior.” Izrael, who was born in Birmingham, Ala., and is the son of a tailor who served in the Civil War, claims he is a victim of anti-Semitism. He has a means of support in Adenauer,…
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Vayera — He Appeared
Genesis 18:1–22:24 You Shall Hear the Cry of the Oppressed The thought of commenting on Parashat Vayera immediately prompts the desire to write something soothing, to get away from the binding of Isaac, the destruction of Sodom and the strange story of Sarah’s strange pregnancy. The portion has other, gentler lessons to teach – for…
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Hidden Treasures of Cairo Genizah
Computer scientists at Tel Aviv University are using artificial intelligence to gather the fragments of the world’s largest collection of medieval documents, the legendary Cairo Genizah, to tell the story of 1,000 years of Jewish history and culture. They have reconstructed more than 1,000 documents from 350,000 individual items found in the Cairo storage room:…
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Books An Actor Who Broke a Leg — or Two
From the Shtetl to the Stage: The Odyssey of a Wandering Actor By Alexander Granach, with a new introduction by Herbert S. Lewis Transaction Publishers, 304 pages, $29.95 Actor Alexander Granach performed in Yiddish as a member of Berlin’s Jacob Gordin Theatrical Society early in the past century. He went from his shtetl in Galicia…
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Books Reading and Thinking About Books
On Monday, Tom Fields-Meyer took a look at autism and God. His 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: EachSaturday morning, I ask my son Ezra the same question. As our…
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Pauline Kael Left Jewish Imprint on Criticism
Can anyone love a professional critic? Perhaps not, but film critic Pauline Kael, who died on September 3, 2001, is receiving a stream of new tributes. The 10th anniversary of her demise was commemorated by three books that treat her life and work with awe, and sometimes with shock. “The Age of Movies: Selected Writings…
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Strange Tale of Hitler’s Jewish Psychic
The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler’s Circle By Arthur Magida Palgrave Macmillan, 288 pages, $26 Where else but in the annals of Jewish history does a boy born to a pair of impoverished runaways become a world-famous mind reader, psychic, astrologer, crime fighter, newspaper publisher, novelist and, if that’s…
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Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
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Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
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Fast Forward AJC, USC Shoah Foundation announce partnership to document antisemitism since World War II
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Yiddish יצחק באַשעװיסעס מיינונגען וועגן די אַמעריקאַנער ייִדןIsaac Bashevis’ opinion of American Jews
אין זײַנע „פֿאָרווערטס“־אַרטיקלען האָט ער קריטיקירט זייער צוגאַנג צום חורבן און צו ייִדישקײט.
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Culture In a Haredi Jerusalem neighborhood, doctors’ visits are free, but the wait may cost you
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Fast Forward Chicago mayor donned keffiyeh for Arab Heritage Month event, sparking outcry from Jewish groups
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