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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Secrets of Ben-Gurion’s Leadership
Ben-Gurion: A Political Life By Shimon Peres and David Landau Schocken, 240 pages, $25.95 The most revealing conversation that Shimon Peres ever had with his mentor, David Ben-Gurion, was perhaps his first. Peres was a young activist in Ha’Noar Ha’Oved, the Labor Zionist youth movement, when he asked the powerful and charismatic chairman of the…
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Tony Kushner’s Tumult and Triumph
I half expected to see the picture of Tennessee Williams that sat on Tony Kushner’s office desk. I didn’t expect the picture of Pep Guardiola, the youngest and most successful manager in the history of Barcelona Football Club, to be sitting right next to it. A present from the late poet Thom Gunn, its presence…
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‘Yahweh’ Should Not Offend Anyone
Reader Peter Siegel is upset by my November 11 column, titled “From Bono to Yahweh.” (Online it was called “How Yahweh Got Its Verbal Vibe Back.”) He writes: Why in the world would your article and title include a spelling of the name of G-d that offends many, many Jews from Orthodox to Reform, who…
The Latest
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Survivor’s Belated Insight Into Holocaust
The Muselmann at the Water Cooler Eli Pfefferkorn Academic Studies Press, 215 pages, $59.95 Since the passage of time plays tricks with memory, memoirs written in proximity to the Holocaust ordinarily are given greater credence than later works. One would imagine that a survivor’s account written more than 65 years after the Holocaust could not…
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A Twist of Israel in Pennsylvania
Ronen Koresh has tears in his eyes. Dancer Melissa Rector has just finished a run-through of a searing solo from Koresh’s “Theater of Public Secrets,” dancing both on and around a table. The cozy second-floor dance studio with the burgundy curtains is silent, the dozen onlookers — dancers and visitors — stunned by raw emotion…
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Books Bringing the Lower East Side to Life
Earlier this week, Chris Moriarty wrote about writing her new book and songs of hope and failure. Her 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: One of my main goals…
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Ariel Dorfman Sees Pitfalls in Exile’s Return
Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile By Ariel Dorfman Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 352 pages, $27 Ariel Dorfman has an ambivalent relationship with Chile: He is attracted to it and repelled by it in equal measure. As is clear from his handful of confessional narratives, the ambivalence makes him restless. But it also gives…
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Looking Back: December 9, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward One of the most important witnesses in the trial of Triangle Waist Company bosses Max Blanck and Isaac Harris is rag dealer Louis Levin, who would buy cloth scraps from the factory regularly. Levin informed the court that the last time he visited the factory was about two months…
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Books Songs of Hope and Failure
On Monday, Chris Moriarty wrote about why she wrote “The Inquisitor’s Apprentice.” Her 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: So the tents have come down at Zuccotti Park. Occupy…
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My Mother and Joseph Stalin
For decades, readers of the Forverts have been delighted by Miriam Hoffman’s wry, literary vignettes. Fresh and personal, historic yet contemporary, Hoffman tells stories of family lives as they intersect with history. Beginning with this story, first published in 1987, her vignettes with be translated into English and published on the forward.com web site. Translated…
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The Wedding Ring
Translated by Miriam Hoffman and Beverly Koenigsberg Every person has a unique history but the stories of those who endured and survived Hitler’s hell are not only singular but exceptional; a survivor’s past encompasses mysteries of a thousand and one horrors which would require many lifetimes to recount. My friend Lily herself stood at the…
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