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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Lou Reed’s Return to Dark Roots
“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to…
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No Straight Path From Dogma to Dissent
Vasily Grossman has received many well-deserved tributes as a dissident writer who dared state what is now the obvious — that when reviewing the wreckage inflicted upon humanity by such dictators as Stalin and Hitler, there are more similarities than differences to be found in their legacies. Paying tribute to this conclusion, and to the…
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Books Author Blog: Recasting a Classic
Francesca Segal’s debut novel “The Innocents” is now available. 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: I would never have set out to recast a classic, Pulitzer-winning American novel — it seemed…
The Latest
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The Liberation of Helène Aylon
Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist By Helène Aylon The Feminist Press, 350 pages, $29.95 Walking through the “Too Jewish?” exhibit at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum back in 1997, surveying the artistic commentaries on popular tropes of American Jewish culture — big noses, Barbra Streisand,…
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How To Train a Hebrew-Speaking Dog
Cheryl Krushat writes: “We are about to adopt a female puppy, to whom my son would like to teach Hebrew commands. My son was given the impression that Israeli search and rescue dog handlers he met while he was in the U.S. Army gave commands in one gender form, regardless of the dog’s sex —…
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Where Have All the Nurses Gone?
One of my favorite television programs is “Nurse Jackie,” which casts a rueful eye on the complicated life of an emergency nurse in a contemporary urban hospital. My husband’s formidable great-aunt, Vera Libo Grinspoon, was a nurse, too — a head nurse at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital in the years leading up to the birth of…
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Books Five Comix About Israel Worth Reading
JT Waldman co-authored and illustrated the new graphic novel “Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me” with writer and frequent David Letterman guest Harvey Pekar. Read more about their relationship here and Harvey Pekar’s legacy here. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s…
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Stopping To Think About the Roses
Traveler of the Century By Andrés Neuman, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 576 pages, $30 There was a time when Latin American writers felt compelled — maybe the word is “constrained” — to focus their work on a single topic: Latin America. Jorge Luis Borges sought to change this…
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You Can Go Home Again
A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful By Gideon Lewis-Kraus Riverhead Books, 344 pages, $26.95 A famous parable tells of a man who travels the world seeking a treasure that he discovers only upon returning home. In “A Sense of Direction,” Gideon Lewis-Kraus fashions a similar trajectory for himself. A memoir…
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Looking Back: July 6, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Annie Hoffman ran out into the street screaming after her Brooklyn candy store caught fire. Hearing her cries, the local beat cop, Officer O’Sullivan, hit the fire alarm and ran into the building to evacuate the tenants. In just a few minutes, he managed to get everyone out; however, in the…
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Books Author Blog: The Legacy of Harvey Pekar
JT Waldman co-authored and illustrated the new graphic novel “Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me” with writer and frequent David Letterman guest Harvey Pekar. Read more about their relationship here. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more…
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