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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Strange Case of Daleds
Reader Reuven Kalifon wonders why Ashkenazi tradition calls the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet “daled” even though its name is spelled ת-ל-ד (read right to left, daled-lamed-taf) and the final, dagesh-less taf is always pronounced as an ‘s’ in the Ashkenazi world. This is the same taf that we have in the letter bet,…
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Toward a Global Jewish Cinema
The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema Edited by Lawrence Baron Brandeis University Press, 464 pages, $39.95 Following two speculative top-100 lists of Jewish movie moments and Jewish movies by Heeb and Tablet, respectively, the arrival of the more serious “The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema” is timely. Lawrence Baron, Nasatir Chair of Modern…
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Books Defining Kafkaesque
Earlier this week, James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel wrote about a man as puzzling as his stories, Kafka and the parable, and Tamar Yellin’s “Kafka in Bronteland.” Today, Kessel examines the Kafkaesque structure. Their blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish…
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A South Carolinian Among the Mormons
In 1853, Solomon Nunes Carvalho set out on the fifth and final expedition of explorer John Charles Frémont through the Rocky Mountains, in search of a westward railroad route to California along the 38th parallel. Carvalho, an observant Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, S.C., had never imagined himself an explorer. He was an artist —…
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Books Escaping the Past?
Earlier this week, James Patrick Kelly wrote about a man as puzzling as his stories and John Kessel examined Kafka and the parable. Today, Kelly discusses Sami Rohr Prize Winner Tamar Yellin and her story “Kafka in Bronteland.”Their blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council…
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Books Tortured Soul of Joseph Roth
Philip will have to make room for another Roth. The irony is that Joseph Roth, a Galician-born Austro-Hungarian Jewish writer, dead for nearly three quarters of a century, has never been more alive in the English speaking world. Translator Michael Hofmann, whose gifted ear has graced 11 of Roth’s titles including the recently published “Joseph…
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Ironies Behind A Stunning Synagogue
Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture By Joseph M. Siry University of Chicago Press, 736 pages, $65 When Rabbi Mortimer J. Cohen contacted Frank Lloyd Wright in November 1953 about designing a new sanctuary for his conservative congregation, Beth Sholom, in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, the legendary architect had…
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Looking Back: January 27, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward Police say that the gang of thieves they caught breaking into the large Manhattan pawn shop on Grand Street near Forsyth Street is responsible for a large number of recent break-ins and robberies. They also said that the gang had some of the most advanced safecracking tools they had…
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Books Albert Brooks on Thugs and Presidents
“I wanted to play a villain but couldn’t convince an American director,” Albert Brooks told an audience January 8, his curly hair framing a gentle cherubic face. The Film Society at Lincoln Center was honoring Brooks for his career, including his recent role as a psychopathic Jewish mafioso in the 2011 movie “Drive.” Given his…
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Books Kafka and the Parable
John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly are the editors of “Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka.” On Monday, James Patrick Kelly wrote about a man as puzzling as his stories and today, John Kessel looks at Kafka and the parable. Their blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the…
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LeWitt’s Wisdom
Originally published in the Forward March 15, 1996 “Ask me any question you want and then put it in your own words,” says Sol LeWitt brightly over the phone from Manhattan, where he is spending a snowy day away from his home in rural Connecticut. His easygoing nonchalance is a bit of a surprise —…
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