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
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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Tougher Task for Israel Fundraisers
The late Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek looms large in the mind of just about every fundraiser for an Israeli organization. This is especially so for Neal Levy, who worked for Kollek two decades ago at the Jerusalem Foundation, the nonprofit founded by the mayor to improve the quality of life for residents of his city….
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How Yahweh Got Its Verbal Vibe Back
Among the blog posts that turn up in my email box are some written for Commentary magazine’s Contentions blog by Peter Wehner, who was a speechwriter for president George W. Bush. Wehner’s pieces, politically conservative and tempered by a Christian outlook, are always thoughtful, and I was struck by a sentence in a recent one…
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Books Silence, Blessed Silence
Earlier this week, Gloria Spielman wrote about finding fellow writers on the Internet and the University of the Ghetto. Her most recent book, “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime,” is now available. Spielman‘s posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite, courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series….
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Finding Purpose in Life’s Second Act
Life stages are artificial, argues Marc Freedman, the 53-year-old social entrepreneur dubbed “the voice of aging baby boomers” by The New York Times. “There was no adolescence before 1904,” Freedman points out before launching into an explanation of his nonprofit’s raison d’être: creating institutions and public policies geared toward boomers who may be past retirement…
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How Gay Rights Teaches Us Torah
Most religious affirmations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been “negative” ones: They argue that Leviticus (and Romans and Corinthians) doesn’t really prohibit homosexuality, or that ancient prohibitions should be set aside in the age of the iPad. But isn’t there a “positive” case, as well — that biblical religious values support the…
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On Belief
“Everything is in the hands of Heaven except for reverence of Heaven” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berachot, 33b) In his commentary of this week’s portion, Lech Lecha, Avraham Burg takes issue with the concept of faith. Weaving together late antiquity Midrash, Maimonides and his own hermeneutics, Burg charts his namesake, the original Abraham, as he who…
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Helping Haiti, Long After the Quake
At the age of 23, Oscar, a college student in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was looking forward to a professional soccer career. Then came the January 2010 earthquake that changed his life. The campus building he was in collapsed — most of his friends were buried under the rubble — and Oscar, who asked to be identified…
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Channeling Kafka, Amos Oz Weaves Weighty Tales
Scenes From Village Life By Amos Oz Translated by Nicholas de Lange Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 182 pages, $22 If Franz Kafka were a happily married, 70-year-old Israeli family man, he wouldn’t be Franz Kafka. He also wouldn’t be Amos Oz. He might, however, have written something quite like Amos Oz’s new book of connected stories,…
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