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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When the Ram’s Horn Sounds
Originally published in the Forward September 6, 2002. To adapt the famous categorization of Claude Levi-Strauss, if such wind instruments as clarinets and cornets are “cooked,” the shofar is definitely “raw.” The question arises: Why has this wild horn, the only biblical instrument still in use, come to represent so much to Jews, especially in…
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Books Praying Outdoors
Earlier this week, Stuart Nadler blogged for the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning‘s Author Blog about casting off one’s sins and the stories that didn’t make it. His 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…
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Leaping Brazilian Leopards
Kafka’s Leopards By Moacyr Scliar. Translated from the Portuguese by Thomas O. Beebee Texas Tech, 96 pages, $26.95 An inveterate dreamer, Moacyr Scliar, the Brazilian-Jewish fabulist who died earlier this year, left behind a veritable treasure trove of enchanting literary artifacts. He was a friend of mine for decades, during which time he published altogether…
The Latest
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A Zionist Heroine in Her Own Mind
My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir By Meir Shalev, translated by Evan Fallenberg Schocken, 224 pages, $25.95 Few writers have a warmer place in the hearts of Israeli readers than Meir Shalev. His upbringing in Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav, inspired “The Blue Mountain,” one of the top best-sellers in Israeli…
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Writing Poetically About Spain and Desire
Leaving the Atocha Station By Ben Lerner Coffee House Press, 186 pages, $15 A novel by a poet differs from a mere novel: It’s a grander affair, an occasion. A reader has many expectations of “a poet’s novel”: an exceptional attention to language, singular imagery and a deeper probing into anything soul-related (certainly deeper than…
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Books How To Ask for a Raise, Over and Over Again
The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise By George Perec, translated by David Bellos Verso, $16.95, 96 pages Like Jorge Louis Borges and his fellow OULIPIAN (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) writer Italo Calvino, Georges Perec stands apart from lesser and more pedantic riddlers with his superior craftsmanship. Also like Calvino and Borges, Perec…
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Books The Stories That Don’t Make It
Yesterday, Stuart Nadler wrote about casting off one’s sins. His 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: At a certain point in the process, I had to do the cutting. Not…
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Books Bookstore Bridges Cultural Gap in L.A.
At first glance, the location seems inauspicious — one of those lonely Los Angeles corners, hard by the freeway, where nothing much happens. Actually, many Angelenos feel similarly about the whole neighborhood. They’ll tell you that Boyle Heights is “Mexican,” and that’s the beginning and end of their curiosity. But David Kipen ⎯ a writer,…
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Have No Fear, It’s Still ‘Porgy and Bess’
As the curtain fell after the fourth round of applause for the American Repertory Theater’s highly anticipated and highly controversial revival of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” which opened on August 31 in Cambridge, Mass., one couldn’t help but give thanks for George Gershwin and Audra McDonald, who played the female title role. Owing to…
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Books Casting Off
Stuart Nadler’s first book, “The Book of Life,” is now available. His 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: For me, the year has always begun in September. I grew up…
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Happy Rosh Hashanah to All, No Matter What the Gender
‘I’m done with all my shanot tovot,” an Israeli friend said to me a while ago, meaning that she had finished sending out shana tova cards to all the people on her list. How did I know that she was talking about greeting cards and not tragically telling me, “I’m done with all my good…
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