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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Who are the Palestinians?
The Forgotten Palestinians By Ilan Pappé Yale University Press, 336 pages, $30 Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza By Sara Roy Princeton University Press, 319 pages, $35 In Your Eyes a Sandstorm: Ways of Being Palestinian By Arthur Neslen University of California Press, 328 pages, $34.95 ‘I can’t believe Bibi [Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu],…
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Forgotten Jewish Dada-ists Get Their Due
The killing fields of World War I produced a bonfire of certainties: Old ways of seeing and believing were twisted and shattered; art, architecture, book-cover designs, music, photography, politics and the very way we dressed and lived were all turned on their heads. Being “avant-garde” was exhilarating. “Dada” was one of the most radical of…
The Latest
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Looking Back: September 30
100 Years Ago in the Forward Three Jews are about to go on trial on charges of espionage: brothers Shishl and Yosl Weissman, and their cousin, Wolf Steinberg, who runs a saloon not far from the Russian border. They were also part of an illegal immigration ring. Because the Russian border guardpost could be seen…
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Books Art Spiegelman: ‘Why Comics? Why Mice? Why the Holocaust?’
The book trailer is out for Art Spiegelman’s much-anticipated “MetaMaus,” a look at the creation of his iconic “Maus” graphic novel, now celebrating its 25th anniversary. In the video Spiegelman says that “Maus” is more about the relationship between a father and son “trying to understand each other” than it is about the Holocaust. In…
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Nancy Miller Hunts for Roots on Three Continents
What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past By Nancy K. Miller University of Nebraska Press, 248 pages, $24.95 Although Nancy Miller calls this book a memoir, it is in many ways more a family detective story, tracking a set of clues back into the past and across the globe. Or, perhaps better, it exemplifies…
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Books An Arrogant Revolution
Lucette Lagnado’s most recent book, “The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn,” is now available. Lucette won the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her memoir “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World.” Her posts…
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The Kittel as a Garment of Majestic Leadership
This kittel explores leadership. Specifically, the responsiblity of leading, and the leaders’ complex relationships to followers and to themselves. On Rosh Hashana our prayer leaders stand before God and together we crown God as King. There are three different leadership archetypes in the Tanach: kings, prophets and priests. It is interesting to note that clothing…
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Missing Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse rose to fame on the back of a series of stunning vocal performances. The Forward’s Artist in Residence, Eli Valley, pays homage to her artistic genius and reflects on his own reactions to her tragic death as well as the media response it occasioned.
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Books Mourning My Arab Spring
Lucette Lagnado’s most recent book, “The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn,” is now available. Lucette won the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her memoir “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World.” Her posts…
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Books Settling a Debate in a NYC Cab
Earlier this week, June Hersh wrote about her perfect day, her Jewish culinary journey and unraveling the mystery of Jewish food. Her 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: As a…
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T.S. Eliot’s On-Again, Off-Again Anti-Semitism
Reading T.S. Eliot in high school, we stumbled over his sneering references to Jews. And with the 1989 publication of “T.S. Eliot and Prejudice” (University of California Press) by Christopher Ricks, and 1995’s “T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form” by Anthony Julius (Thames & Hudson), poetry lovers have a clear account of how Eliot, author…
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