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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No Lines in Sand for Eli Valley
When New York satirist and cartoonist Eli Valley heard about the Israeli anti-Semitic cartoon contest six years ago, he sent in the following cartoon: a grotesque Jew with two penises simultaneously sodomizing a Muslim woman and a Christian woman who are crying out to Allah and Jesus to save them. With one hand the Jew…
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Books Q&A: Sonia Taitz on Old Country and Oxford
Sonia Taitz is, by her own admission, an overachiever. Yeshiva educated, she earned degrees in both psychology and English from Barnard College (Phi Beta Kappa, of course), a master’s in philosophy from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale University. Taitz is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and that crucially shaped the person she…
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Movement With Purpose
Hard on the heels of Israel’s summer protests for social justice, Dana Yahalomi, leader of the “performative research” group Public Movement, arrived in New York City, only to find the Occupy Wall Street movement camped in Zuccotti Square. Coming from the largest protests in her country’s history and being met with what is now a…
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Looking Back: February 24, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward A bloody war between rival gangs exploded on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Numerous shots were fired, bringing many residents onto the streets, where chaos reigned. Although many calls were placed to the police, the gangs had scattered by the time they arrived. Two gang members, 21-year-old Nathan Levi and…
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Books The Ghost
Earlier this week, Leigh Stein revealed one of her early aspirations: to “Be Anne Frank.” Her 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: My fascination with New Mexico began in…
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What Is Nathan Englander Saying?
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank By Nathan Englander Knopf, 224 pages, $24.95 You have to clamber over the bodies of Anne Frank and Raymond Carver to reach Nathan Englander’s new stories. With all the ghosts, comparisons and cultural baggage, it’s a messy business, not least because the drying footprints of…
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Books The Diarist
Leigh Stein’s debut novel, “The Fallback Plan,” is now available. Her 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: Before I’d settled on acting or writing, my greatest aspiration was simply…
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Who Put the J (and -Ew) in Jew?
Philip Brogadir writes: “As a Jew (getting my bona fides in early), I’ve often had negative reactions to hearing or reading the word ‘Jew’ of the type you describe in your January 20 column. The reasons you give for this reaction are all well taken. However, you omit one that is, in my opinion, as…
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‘Hugo’s French Connection
It’s déjà vu all over again at the Academy Awards: The nation that gave us motion pictures stands to sweep the Oscars, which will be broadcast February 26. Leading the new wave of French-made or French-inspired movies this year is, of course, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” with 11 nominations. Through the use of new technologies like…
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Jewish Roots of the New Testament
‘It is evil for Christians to try to convert Jews with this dreck. Why don’t you people leave us in peace?” So wrote one Amazon reviewer of the new “Jewish Annotated New Testament” (Oxford University Press, 2011), a magisterial volume of Jewish commentaries, essays and scholarly notes on the second half of the Christian Bible….
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Making a Killing From Communication
The Flame Alphabet By Ben Marcus Knopf, 304 pages, $25.95 In the beginning, there was language and also a tree of knowledge. Then human beings got wind of all that, and things started to come undone. We in the digital age are constantly bemoaning the breakdown of real communication and the impending demise of the…
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