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
Welcome to the Dybbuk Revival
The Dibbuk Box By Jason Haxton Truman State University Press, 192 pages, $19.95 Yiddish revival? That’s so 2011. This year is all about the Dybbuk revival. That is, insofar as a disembodied spirit can be revived, and monetized. So far the Dybbuk revival includes a book (“The Dibbuk Box”) and a movie set for summer…
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The Inquisition Is Now (and Forever)
God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World By Cullen Murphy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 320 pages, $27 There is something preposterous about Cullen Murphy’s journey through the history of the Inquisition. He analyzes it as if it were the root of all institutional evil in the modern world. Really. For years the…
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Books Author Blog: Is Prayer for Activists?
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the founder and president of Uri L’Tzedek. He is the author of “Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century.” 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…
The Latest
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Tony Judt’s Corrosive Eloquence
Thinking the Twentieth Century By Tony Judt, with Timothy Snyder Penguin Press, 432 pages, $36 After a long and courageous struggle against the nerve cell disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Tony Judt died in August 2010, at the age of 62. The series of conversations that he had with historian Timothy Snyder during the final stretch…
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A Transsexual at Yeshiva University
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders By Joy Ladin University of Wisconsin Press, 270 pages, $26.95 Probably one of the best-known Jewish stories in the world is a transgender tale. A young educator realizes that they really belong with the opposite gender. And, although it overturns social convention and throws families…
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Obama’s Got Our Back. Is That Good?
I must admit that when my eye first caught the phrase “Obama: U.S. will always have Israel’s back” in a March 6 newspaper report on the Obama-Netanyahu meeting in the White House, I was worried. Although I wasn’t sure what it meant, it didn’t sound good. My first two associations were with “I’ll have your…
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Books Why Do Men Write All the Baby Manuals?
A few days after my husband and I brought home our newborn daughter from the hospital, she wouldn’t stop crying. Our 10-week pregnancy class had prepared us to give birth in a tub (which I didn’t) and to hire a doula (which I did), but not to change diapers or comfort a wailing infant. My…
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Books Author Blog: Saying New Things About Old Episodes
Earlier this week, Dr. Jonathan Sarna wrote about writing his most recent book, “When General Grant Expelled the Jews,” in Jerusalem. 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: When…
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Making a ‘New Jerusalem’ in D.C.
Despite a title that sounds like a grad school dissertation, and pontifications that would make a third-year philosophy major proud, “New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza” keeps theatergoers surprisingly engaged. In fact, the opening night audience at Theater J took in the fast-paced courtroom-style drama with at times audible gasps and guffaws. Theater…
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Looking Back: March 23, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward With dozens of detectives on the case, the police currently have no suspects and no clues about who threw a bomb into the home of Judge Otto Rosalsky. The judge doesn’t believe any of the theories the police have put forward. The police presented, without evidence, the theory that…
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Kehinde Wiley Paints Israelis in Color
Most articles about the artist Kehinde Wiley begin with a line recounting his accomplishments — more than 20 solo shows in galleries and museums around the world, studios in three cities, work that sells for as much as $250,000 — followed by a sly mention of how young he is (35). Yes, Wiley is impressive….
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