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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Umberto Eco on Conspiracies and Novels
Umberto Eco has died at 84 on Friday, February 19. Dan Friedman sat down with the Italian novelist and historian four years ago for a revealing interview. I couldn’t get that unlit cigar out of my mind. I was in congenial conversation with someone I deeply admired but all I could think of was that…
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Books The Jewish Message
Earlier this week, Tom Fields-Meyer wrote about reading and thinking about books and took a look at autism and God. His 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: Not long…
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Ezekiel’s Clear and Piercing Point
Reading Avrum’s thoughts on this week’s torah portion, I find it hard to choose what to focus on. I feel intrigued by the invitation to think about God’s ‘color,’ especially God in shades of gray. I feel a need to agree with his open embrace to the various life-bearing options of new families. But like…
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Living With And Without Revered Maid
The other night I dreamed that my parents, siblings and I were sitting in the sukkah, making polite conversation with our guests, when the sukkah’s rickety wooden walls were breached by the high-pitched and insistent cry of my mother’s name: “Al-ice, Al-ice.” My mother, reddening slightly, got up from the table with all the dignity…
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Jews Who Died Fighting in Red Army
On May 9, 1995 — 50 years after the end of World War II — I stood among a celebratory crowd in a provincial Russian town and glanced over to see a war veteran pointedly scoop a palmful of water out of a puddle. The veteran drank as if it were the finest water he…
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Dead Sea Scrolls Come to Times Square
“Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times,” which opened on October 30 at the cavernous Discovery Times Square exhibit space in New York, touts itself as showcasing “the largest and most comprehensive collection of Holy Land artifacts ever organized.” Indeed, a more accurate title for this Bible-themed behemoth of a show, produced in…
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Books Girls Celebrating Bat Mitzvah, Around the World
My Dear Sweet Daughter: We’ve come a long way in making our place in the synagogue. When I was a little girl I once told my grandfather—my very old-fashioned Abuelo — that I wanted to be a rabbi. “That,” he said to me, “is very ugly.” He said the word in Spanish—fea. I despaired. The…
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Looking Back: November 18, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward • West Point military academy student Joseph Izrael has been expelled for “poor behavior.” Izrael, who was born in Birmingham, Ala., and is the son of a tailor who served in the Civil War, claims he is a victim of anti-Semitism. He has a means of support in Adenauer,…
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Vayera — He Appeared
Genesis 18:1–22:24 You Shall Hear the Cry of the Oppressed The thought of commenting on Parashat Vayera immediately prompts the desire to write something soothing, to get away from the binding of Isaac, the destruction of Sodom and the strange story of Sarah’s strange pregnancy. The portion has other, gentler lessons to teach – for…
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Hidden Treasures of Cairo Genizah
Computer scientists at Tel Aviv University are using artificial intelligence to gather the fragments of the world’s largest collection of medieval documents, the legendary Cairo Genizah, to tell the story of 1,000 years of Jewish history and culture. They have reconstructed more than 1,000 documents from 350,000 individual items found in the Cairo storage room:…
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Books An Actor Who Broke a Leg — or Two
From the Shtetl to the Stage: The Odyssey of a Wandering Actor By Alexander Granach, with a new introduction by Herbert S. Lewis Transaction Publishers, 304 pages, $29.95 Actor Alexander Granach performed in Yiddish as a member of Berlin’s Jacob Gordin Theatrical Society early in the past century. He went from his shtetl in Galicia…
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