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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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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:…
The Latest
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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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Books Autism and God
Tom Fields-Meyer is the author of “Following Ezra,” a memoir about learning from his autistic son. 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: I was a guest on a radio…
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Books Writer Seeks Funding for New Book
‘Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!” wrote Herman Melville in “Moby Dick.” In other words, writing is an endurance test, and it can drive you mad. And if it was problematic for him, imagine how the rest of us feel. Unlike whaling, this is something I understand from experience. I’m no Melville, but I have…
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Ten Young Jews, Making a Difference
In September, the Forward asked readers to nominate Jews, age 21 and younger, who are working to make a difference locally or globally. The responses both surprised and inspired us; we found a boundless breadth of activism among this mature-beyond-their-years cohort. Although these young people are operating with limited resources, their global consciousness — not…
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Camille Pissarro’s Full Life on Display
Renowned as an Impressionist painter of landscapes, less widely known as a Jew and an anarchist, Camille Pissarro (1830 –1903) made his debut as a figure painter in 1882. Almost 140 years later, his splendid portraits of French peasants, outdoor market crowds, domestic servants and his own family can be seen at San Francisco’s Legion…
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Three Foundations Will Leave Huge Gap
Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies , the Avi Chai Foundation and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund and winding down their giving
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