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
Talking to Aharon Appelfeld in Pennsylvania
“I’m not looking at Aharon…” “He’s looking at you.” It’s not often that professors of literature have a chance to speak about a writer’s work in front of him. This interchange between Iris Milner, of Tel Aviv University, and Yigal Schwartz of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, took place at the International Conference on…
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Books My First Writing Group: The Internet
On Monday, Gloria Spielman wrote about 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. For more information on the series, please visit:…
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Sepia-Tinged Take on Jascha Heifetz
In the new documentary “God’s Fiddler,” on the life of Jascha Heifetz, director Peter Rosen succeeds in creating the first film biography of the violin virtuoso. The film succeeds as a sort of classical parallel to the VH1 series “Behind the Music,” using Heifetz’s own home films and interviews with artistic colleagues to flesh out…
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Looking Back November 11, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Detroit is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. It also has a Jewish community of about 20,000 that is on the rise. Currently, Detroit’s Jewish ghetto centers on Hastings Street, a typically dirty Jewish street dotted with little shops and lunchrooms. The street itself wouldn’t be…
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Charity Is ‘Rock’ for Immigrants
In the five years leading up to the deal freeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli nation adopted his family as its own, sharing its pain and campaigning for its cause. Meanwhile, the family of Pavel Slotzker was all but forgotten. Shalit’s comrade, Slotzker was a victim of the same cross-border raid in which militants abducted Shalit,…
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Helping Stunned Victims of Tsunami
When a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Eastern Japan earlier this year, the staff at Fuji Youchien kindergarten in the small town of Yamamoto followed well-rehearsed regulations. They quickly took all the children outside to the parking lot. After a few minutes, with the ground still shaking and rain pouring down,…
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Are Mitzvah Days An Excuse To Stay Away?
As I raced through scales to warm up my piccolo, an old man with an oxygen tube in his nose smiled at me. “I love the piccolo,” he said. The man, a retired congregational rabbi, sat front row center in the social hall of an assisted living home, as a handful of members from my…
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Lech Lecha — Get Thee Out
Genesis 12:1–17:27 Abraham, Defender of the Fledgling Faith The culture of the Christian West, the culture of the Muslim world and the culture of the Jewish community are, in the final analysis, the cultures of Abraham. Some call them revealed religions — religions with a central hub that turns on an axis of divine revelation,…
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Books University of the Ghetto
Gloria Spielman‘s most recent book, “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime,” is now available. “Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime” won a silver medal in the 2011 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. 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. For more…
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‘After Weegee’ Defends Photojournalism
After Weegee: Essays on Contemporary Jewish American Photographers By Daniel Morris Syracuse University Press, 320 pages, $29.95 More than a decade ago, William Klein claimed that there are two kinds of photographers: “Jewish and goyish.” He said that if you look at modern photography, you find, “on the one hand, the Weegees, the Diane Arbuses,…
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Is This Any Way to Name a Train Station?
Forward reader Eldad Ganin has sent me an excerpt from an English-language publication in the Ukrainian city of Lviv (better known by its Polish, Yiddish and Russian name of Lvov), along with a query. The excerpt reads: Why Central Trains Stations in Ukraine Are Called ‘Vokzal’ It is believed that the word vokzal originated from…
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