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
Jewish Humor on ‘Treasure Island’
Treasure Island!!! By Sara Levine Europa Editions, 172 pages, $15.00 There are as many Jewish humors as there are funny Jews, which is to say that there are 12 — and half of them haven’t been good in years. Many essentialist definitions of Jewish humor, such as the comedy of outsiders, or the comedy of…
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Books Author Blog: Writing the Civil War in Jerusalem
Dr. Jonathan Sarna’s newest book, “When General Grant Expelled the Jews,” is now available. 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: “You are working on what?” most of the…
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Time to Come Clean on Shoah Role
It can take 70 years for some French trains to run on time. And even then, you can’t rely on them. In February, French author Alain Lipietz reacted with scorn to the announcement that the SNCF, the French national railroad, intends to open its archives for the period of 1939–1945. He declared that the SNCF…
The Latest
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Deciphering Secrets of the ‘Patio Tomb’
Some of you may have heard or read in recent days about the “Patio Tomb” in Jerusalem’s southern neighborhood of Talpiot, a Second-Temple-period cave, now situated beneath an apartment building, in which a team of archaeologists sponsored by the University of North Carolina claims to have found the earliest known Christian burial site — indeed,…
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Fighting Fiercely Over Jewish Recipes
American Jews are no strangers to competition. One might even say it’s the coin of the realm, especially when it comes to academics, the law, sports and synagogue politics. All the same, it might very well surprise you, as it did me, to learn that competition also encompasses the realm of food. No, I don’t…
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Geleh: A Love Story
Translated by Miriam Hoffman and Beverly Koenigsberg This story originally appeared in the Forverts of July 30, 1993. My father was at one time a handsome and elegant young man — tall, with broad shoulders and a forelock of curly red hair. He loved flirting with the girls. He told me that many young women…
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Cultural Bulwarks Against Neo-Nazism
The February 1945 firebombing of Dresden has long been a rallying point for neo-Nazis. Indeed, prominent Holocaust deniers have been assiduous in symbolically conflating Dresden with Hiroshima as the real crematoria of World War II. Neo-Nazis have swarmed this ancient capital of Saxony for every anniversary of the bombing since the reunification of Germany in…
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Books Meyers Dishes on Writing and Murder
Today, Alicia Oltuski interviews Randy Susan Meyers, who wrote “The Murderer’s Daughters,” about her experience touring the nation’s synagogues and JCCs with Jewish Book Council… and talking about domestic violence in Jewish communities. Oltuski’s blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s…
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Addicted to Love (and Drugs)
Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16 By Moshe Kasher Grand Central Publishing, 320 pages, $24.99 Flatscreen: A Novel By Adam Wilson Harper Perennial, 336 pages, $14.99 Since when did alcoholism and drug addiction become part of…
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Looking Back: March 16, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward The horse-poisoning trial of cloak maker Jacob Cohen began before Judge Otto Rosalsky. The trial opened with the first witness, a Pinkerton Detective, claiming to have caught Cohen in the act. The detective testified that he was on a stakeout on Market Street in front of Rubin’s Grocery Store…
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Books Alternative Comics From Long Island
Lost and Found: Comics 1969-2003 By Bill Griffith Fantagraphics Books, 364 pages $35 Bill Griffith, the one prominent figure of underground comix to reach the daily comic page mainstream, has delivered again with a phone book-sized volume both odd and pleasing. It comes with a Long Island back-story. Life (suburban life, that is), found this…
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