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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Telling the Holocaust Through Dance
Stephen Mills initially balked at the suggestion that he create a Holocaust ballet. The artistic director of the Ballet Austin company recalled saying: “I’m not Jewish. I don’t really have much Holocaust education. I’ve never even met a survivor.” That’s when his friend, Mary Lee Webeck, a University of Texas education professor, connected Mills with…
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Looking Back: March 30, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward Late on a Friday night, Jacob Goldstein was sitting in his Suffolk Street apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side when there was a knock at the door. Without thinking about it too much, Goldstein got up and answered it. When he opened the door, three men were standing there…
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Music The Yemen Singer
Crossposted from Haaretz When singer Zion Golan entered the wedding hall in Yehud at 7:10 P.M., the atmosphere was sleepy. Hardly anyone was there, not even all the waiters; it would be another two hours before the rest of the guests arrived and the wedding ceremony began. Those who were present no doubt wondered what…
The Latest
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Books Welcome to the Dybbuk Revival
The Dibbuk Box By Jason Haxton Truman State University Press, 192 pages, $19.95 Yiddish revival? That’s so 2011. This year is all about the Dybbuk revival. That is, insofar as a disembodied spirit can be revived, and monetized. So far the Dybbuk revival includes a book (“The Dibbuk Box”) and a movie set for summer…
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The Inquisition Is Now (and Forever)
God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World By Cullen Murphy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 320 pages, $27 There is something preposterous about Cullen Murphy’s journey through the history of the Inquisition. He analyzes it as if it were the root of all institutional evil in the modern world. Really. For years the…
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Books Author Blog: Is Prayer for Activists?
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the founder and president of Uri L’Tzedek. He is the author of “Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century.” 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…
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Tony Judt’s Corrosive Eloquence
Thinking the Twentieth Century By Tony Judt, with Timothy Snyder Penguin Press, 432 pages, $36 After a long and courageous struggle against the nerve cell disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Tony Judt died in August 2010, at the age of 62. The series of conversations that he had with historian Timothy Snyder during the final stretch…
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A Transsexual at Yeshiva University
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders By Joy Ladin University of Wisconsin Press, 270 pages, $26.95 Probably one of the best-known Jewish stories in the world is a transgender tale. A young educator realizes that they really belong with the opposite gender. And, although it overturns social convention and throws families…
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Obama’s Got Our Back. Is That Good?
I must admit that when my eye first caught the phrase “Obama: U.S. will always have Israel’s back” in a March 6 newspaper report on the Obama-Netanyahu meeting in the White House, I was worried. Although I wasn’t sure what it meant, it didn’t sound good. My first two associations were with “I’ll have your…
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Books Why Do Men Write All the Baby Manuals?
A few days after my husband and I brought home our newborn daughter from the hospital, she wouldn’t stop crying. Our 10-week pregnancy class had prepared us to give birth in a tub (which I didn’t) and to hire a doula (which I did), but not to change diapers or comfort a wailing infant. My…
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Books Author Blog: Saying New Things About Old Episodes
Earlier this week, Dr. Jonathan Sarna wrote about writing his most recent book, “When General Grant Expelled the Jews,” in Jerusalem. 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: When…
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