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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Philly Opera’s ‘Kumbaya’ Moment
By chance I attended “Slaying the Dragon,” a new opera on the subject of violence and surprising redemption, on June 17, the same day that Rodney King died. King — the victim of a savage beating in 1991 by Los Angeles police (the video of which provoked one of the worst race riots in recent…
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Books Do Jews Win the Anxiety Sweepstakes?
Dan Smith’s second book, “Monkey Mind,” is a warm and painful look into his life-long struggle with anxiety and paradox. The same dogged interrogation of his psyche which antagonizes and often undermines him is redirected here in service of understanding and healing. What results is a patient, emotional and often funny catalogue of how he…
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Books Author Blog: My Pekar Years
JT Waldman is the author of “Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me” and Megillat Esther. Visit his official website 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 information on the series, please visit: I met Harvey Pekar…
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Books Author Blog: Albert Einstein As Committed Jew
Last week, Harry Ostrer wrote about a series of scientists who contributed to our contemporary understanding of Jewishness. 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 information on the series, please visit: Albert Einstein may have been the most…
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Books Author Blog: It’s All in the Blood
Last week, Harry Ostrer wrote about a series of scientists who contributed to our contemporary understanding of Jewishness. 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 information on the series, please visit: If being Jewish were in the blood,…
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For Ladino Musicians, World’s A Stage
On July 9, amid rainwater cracks in limestone rock, charcoal ibex painted by prehistoric man and discarded artifacts from Victorian-era picnics, a loose collective of Jewish women will sing songs of the Sephardic Diaspora. Vocalists Sarah Aroeste, Mor Karbasi and Françoise Atlan will perform at the inaugural Gibraltar World Music Festival in the time-formed Cueva…
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Cartoonist Visits Most Contested City
Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City By Guy Delisle Drawn & Quarterly, 320 pages, $24.95 A city so religiously and historically intense that it’s got its own eponymous syndrome for visitors who flip out under pressure, Jerusalem is the unequivocal go-to destination for anyone wanting a look at the world’s epicenter of multi-faith fanaticism. An…
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Rise of the Machines
Gideon Weisz of Boulder, Colo., calls my attention to a recent BBC translation gaffe that has British Jews chuckling. In their comedy “Episodes,” the British television channel’s producers staged a scene in a Jewish cemetery in which there is a tombstone bearing the English inscription: Beloved Husband and Father Yehudi Penzel Dearly Missed Beloved Head…
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When Part Is Lost, What of the Whole?
The World Without You By Joshua Henkin Pantheon, 336 pages, $25.95 Leo Frankel is dead. He died on July 4, 2004, while on a reporting trip in Iraq. The action of “The World Without You” takes place over the weekend of his unveiling, in 2005, and while Leo is, in some ways, at the center…
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Books Author Blog: Truth That’s Stranger Than Fiction
Earlier this week, Lois Leveen wrote about what makes a book Jewish. 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: Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. But it can be hard to tell….
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Looking Back: July 6, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Annie Weiss, 16, was dragged before Magistrate Corrigan in Manhattan’s Centre Street Courthouse on the charge that she was the ringleader of a band of young thieves. A few weeks ago, a gang of young boys broke into the Rabinowitz home on 8 Rector Place and stole goods valued at $50….
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