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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Tracing an Adoptee’s Novel Past
By Blood By Ellen Ullman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 387 pages, $27 “I am not adopted; I have mysterious origins.” It’s a line Ellen Ullman says she has repeated to herself many times, as an adopted person, and one she likes so much that she put it in the mouth of the central character in…
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Peter Beinart’s Big Zionist Experiment
The Crisis of Zionism By Peter Beinart Times Books, 304 pages, $26 It’s not often that the publication of a book is preceded by months of debate about its central argument. But that has been the fate of Peter Beinart’s “The Crisis of Zionism,” for which defenses and denunciations stretch back to 2010. It was…
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Books Author Blog: The First Jewish Debate
Earlier this week, Rabbi Barry Schwartz wrote about needing more Jewish debate. 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: The first Jewish debate never ceases to amaze me. I…
The Latest
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Books Moshe Kasher, a ‘Prodigy of Misconduct’
On the day of Moshe Kasher’s bris, his grandfather held him in his hands and declared, “This boy will be a great rabbi, I can see into his soul.” The old man’s prophesy almost came true. One of his grandsons did grow up to become a rabbi: Moshe’s brother, David. Moshe, meanwhile, grew into a…
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Grant’s Anti-Semitism—And Tolerance
When General Grant Expelled the Jews By Jonathan D. Sarna Schocken/Nextbook, 224 pages, $24.95 Only once since 1790, when newly elected President George Washington promised Jews that the new American nation would give “to bigotry no sanction,” has a prominent American official promulgated a discriminatory ruling explicitly targeting Jews. While some details remain murky, the…
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Rewriting ‘Hatikvah’ as Anthem for All
Back in 1998, I wrote a column about “Hatikvah.” It was occasioned by a European Cup soccer game between Israel and Austria, before which, as usual on such occasions, the national anthems of both countries were played. When the band struck up the Israeli anthem, the whole Israeli team joined in singing it except for…
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Books Author Blog: We Need More Jewish Debate
Rabbi Barry Schwartz is director of The Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia and rabbi of Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia, N.J. He is the author of “Judaism’s Great Debates” (Behrman House, March 2012, student edition; Jewish Publication Society, May, 2012, adult edition). His blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy…
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‘Cabaret’ Comes to Tel Aviv
Inside a dark theater on a recent Friday night, the master of ceremonies slinks up to the microphone and smacks his painted red lips. “Meine Damen und Herren, Ladies and Gentlemen! Leave your troubles outside! We have no troubles here! Here, life is beautiful.” Onstage, he lives in the carefree world of 1931 Berlin, but…
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‘Dreyfus’ of the Classical Music World
The sudden proliferation of Jewish composers in the mid-19th century was unprecedented in the history of classical music. Until then, Jews had been limited to the role of virtuoso performers, but that all changed when Germany’s two most famous composers were of Jewish origin. These two were Felix Mendelssohn, whose most prominent public manifestation was…
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Books Author Blog: Is the Synagogue a Relic?
Earlier this week, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz wrote about prayer and activism and prioritizing the vulnerable in justice. His blog posts have been 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: Many Jews today claim that…
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‘Tis the Season for New Haggadot
New American Haggadah Edited by Jonathan Safran Foer Translated by Nathan Englander Little, Brown. 160 pages, $29.99 Wellsprings of Freedom: The Renew Our Days Haggadah By Rabbi Ronald Aigen Emet Press, 148 pages, $23 The Koren Ethiopian Haggada: Journey to Freedom Edited by Rabbi Menachem Waldman Translated by Binyamin Shalom Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 200 pages,…
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