Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Books Google Maps of Jerusalem, Circa 1570
Crossposted from Haaretz Late 16th-century Jerusalem is “the most famous of Judea and the entire East, whose size and splendor marvels the imagination” according to German geographer and theologian George Braun, who during the Renaissance created several of the most important historical maps of the city. “That Jerusalem is the center of the whole world…
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A Modest Proposal
For several decades, opposition to circumcision has been building in the United States and within the American Jewish community. This year, the people of San Francisco will see on their ballots a proposed ordinance banning circumcision entirely, with no exception for religious Jews or Muslims. As others have written in these pages already, this measure…
The Latest
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Are the Smurfs Anti-Semitic Misogynists?
On Saturday, June 25, in more than 12 major cities around the world, hundreds of people are scheduled to congregate, their bodies painted blue from head to toe. No, this is not the filming of the sequel to “Avatar”; rather, it’s a global celebration of the beloved cartoon series “The Smurfs.” The occasion is the…
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Books Jewish Writer
Earlier this week, David Albahari wrote about the madness of one-paragraph novels and the author’s voice. 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: Being a Jewish writer is no…
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Separating the Dancer From the Dance Exchange
Liz Lerman, long the dominant Jewish voice in the barefoot, rule-breaking world of American modern dance, is stepping down from the Maryland-based company she founded in 1976 to pursue independent projects. That leaves the Dance Exchange — the renowned, multigenerational company she created and guided for more than three decades — under new leadership. Nine-year…
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Bismarck’s Bayonets
Bismarck: A Life By Jonathan Steinberg Oxford University Press, 592 pages, $34.95 Otto von Bismarck once said, “You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.” By making Bismarck prime minister of Prussia in 1862, the Prussian monarch, King Wilhelm (William) I, was rolling the dice. Wilhelm was facing a constitutional crisis after the…
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Lilka from Telekhany, Lilith From L.A.
“The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” is a promising yet confounding new drama from Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company that touches on the Holocaust, on the loneliness of old age and, explicitly, on the magic of the theater. Inspired by the Jewish short stories in the work of the late radio broadcaster Johanna Cooper,…
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Full of Sound and Fury
The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture By David Mamet Sentinel, 256 pages, $27.95 Since this is about David Mamet, let’s get right to the point. Mamet the dramatist, the prolific playwright, screenwriter and director, is now taking on the Big American Questions — religion and politics — in prose. Mamet’s 2006 “The…
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We Will, We Will Rock You
Plus ça change, plus ça reste le même chose. The dispute that has recently arisen in Israel concerning the wording of the Yizkor prayer for fallen soldiers, said on the country’s annual Yom ha-Zikaron, or Memorial Day, reminds one of nothing so much as a similar quarrel that nearly delayed the Jewish state’s declaration of…
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Books The Voice
On Monday, David Albahari explained the motive behind the madness of one-paragraph novels. 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: I think it was Saul Bellow who once said…
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Sex, Violence and Growing Up On a Farm in Israel
Farm 54 By Galit and Gilad Seliktar Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 136 pages, $25 Why is it that graphic novels are so much more interesting these days than their prose siblings? It’s not simply because they can be read more quickly and so better accommodate our diminishing, Twitterized attention spans — it’s also because contemporary comics artists…
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