This Week in Forward Arts and Culture

By Ezra Glinter September 3, 2010

• Benjamin Ivry dusts off Benjamin Botkin, a pioneering folklorist vilified for his scholarly openness.

• Shlomo Schwartzberg celebrates journalist Ruth Gruber, who became the youngest Ph.D. in history — in 1932.

• Philologos investigates the word “synagogue,” and why nobody seems to use it very much.

• Yossl Huttler contributes two poems about the High Holy Days.

• Gordon Haber critiques “The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election” by Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz.

• In the latest Nigun Project, Jeremiah Lockwood joins forces with Malian singer Khaira Arby and her band on “The Baal Shem Tov’s Nigun.”

• Keith Meatto reviews Jon Papernick’s short story collection “There Is No Other,” which was previously featured on the Forward’s Yid Lit podcast, here.

• In this week’s Yid Lit podcast, Allison Gaudet Yarrow talks to Rachel Shukert about her new memoir “Everything is Going to Be Great.”

• And on the Forverts Video Channel, Ross Perlin, a “New York Jew in China,” reports on “real Chinese food”:

Ezra Glinter is the critic-at-large of the Forward.

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