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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Books
Author Blog: Seeking Fact, Finding the Unknowable
Debra Spark’s newest book, “The Pretty Girl,” is now available. 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: In literature, as in life, you may go looking for one thing, only to find…
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Dannie Abse Brings Jewish Twist to Wales
Though “What will survive of us is love” comes from his captious contemporary, Philip Larkin, the line might stand for the life and career of Welsh-Jewish poet Dannie Abse. Having turned 88 last September, Abse was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, in the 2012 New Year Honours, “for services…
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A ‘Crazy’ Look at Paris Strip Palace
Frederick Wiseman is one of the few Jewish geniuses of documentary filmmaking. In a career spanning 39 films, he has earned acclaim for portraying the internal dynamics of prisons, high schools, mental hospitals, courts, the military and zoos. In the 1995 film “Ballet,” as well as in his sumptuous 2009 movie “La Danse,” he displayed…
The Latest
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From Esperanza to Shprintze
Bert Horwitz writes from Asheville, N.C.: “The outcome of a dispute between me and my wife was: ‘Let’s ask Philologos.’ In Sholem Aleichem’s ‘Tevye the Milkman,’ one of Tevye’s daughters is named Shprintze — a name my wife claimed derived from Latin or Spanish Esperanza, meaning ‘hope.’ I said that there are no Latin- or…
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Books Author Blog: Primordial Slush
Earlier this week, Ramona Ausubel wrote about what she is, a mother, and what she isn’t, an actress. 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: Several years ago at a writing conference,…
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A Poem of One’s Own
A.M. Klein: The Letters By A.M. Klein Edited by Elizabeth A. Popham University of Toronto Press, 504 pages, $85 Those of us involved with Jewish life and culture in the Diaspora must often ask ourselves a fundamental question: Do we view ourselves as one among many minority cultures that comprise our larger society? Or do…
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Cataloguing the ‘Missed Destiny of Death’
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume II Edited by Martin Dean Geoffrey P. Megargee, General Editor Indiana University Press, 2,036 pages, $236 Over the past two decades, a number of essential works have contributed to both our knowledge of the Nazi regime during World War II and its plans to conquer Europe and eventually…
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Was Adolf Hitler Leader or Follower?
Hitler: A Biography By Ian Kershaw W.W. Norton, 1,030 pages, $25.95 Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich By Robert Gerwarth Yale University Press, 336 pages, $35 Heinrich Himmler: A Life By Peter Longerich Oxford University Press, 1,072 pages, $34.95 Those who can, make history; those who can’t, write history; those who can’t write history write…
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Books Author Blog: Mother/Writer
Earlier this week, Ramona Ausubel wrote about why she’s a writer and not an actress. 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: I have been a writer for my whole adult life….
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Giving Voice to Kabbalah Masters
The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse From the Jewish Tradition Translated and annotated by Peter Cole Co-edited and with an afterword by Aminadav Dykman Yale University Press, 544 pages, $30 ‘There among the trees of God / … I’d enter the sacred shrine of the woods / … And as I sat at the edge…
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Books Author Blog: Why I Write
Ramona Ausubel is the author of the novel “No One Is Here Except All of Us,” published by Riverhead Books. 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: Maybe there are four or…
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