A new exhibit at Brandeis University displays two works by Felix Lembersky, painter of the Babi Yar massacre. Has there been an effort to downplay Anne Frank’s Jewishness? “Naked Balzac With Folded Arms,” a sculpture by Auguste Rodin, has been stolen from the Israel Museum. Husband-wife team Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman are developing a…
Michael Weiss on why Boris Pasternak matters. Was Jewish humor created in 1661? Steven Spielberg has secured the rights to make a Wikileaks movie. The new edition of the Laba Journal, “Eros,” is out, featuring Stephen Hazan Arnoff on music and artificial memory, Shari Mendelson on the work of Charles LeDray, fiction by Jeremiah Lockwood,…
Actress Natalie Portman and writers David Seidler and Aaron Sorkin were among the winners at last night’s Academy Awards. Also, the Israeli documentary “Strangers No More” took home the prize for best short documentary. “Zenga Zenga,” An Israel video lampooning Muammar Gaddafi, has gone viral. A new biography argues for the continuing relevance of Amedeo…
How one of the most popular Jewish books of the modern era explained everything from Kabbalah to cosmology, astronomy, geography, botany, zoology and medicine. Novelist David Bezmozgis and filmmaker Richard J. Lewis exchange letters on “Barney’s Version.” Will Justin Timberlake star in the upcoming Three Stooges movie? A film about Europe’s largest Jewish cemetery and…
Garry Kasparov tells us what it’s like to play chess in the shadow of Bobby Fischer. In a 1923 article in The Nation, “Romanian-Jewish-American-Yiddish novelist, journalist, dandy, screwball folklorist of the Gypsies” Konrad Bercovici described “The Greatest Jewish City in the World.” An Israeli forger almost managed to sell a fake Kandinsky for three million…
Novelist Jonathan Lethem, author of “Motherless Brooklyn,” leaves Brooklyn for Southern California. Kevin Spacey unveiled his new Middle East Theater Academy in Dubai. Forward contributing editor Ilan Stavans talks about putting together the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. Ketubahs aren’t just for Jews anymore, says Samuel Freedman in the New York Times. Tablet Magazine profiles…
The finalists for the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature have been announced. Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Library has become home to Maurice Sendak’s only mural. Jonah Lehrer retrieves Thorstein Veblen’s forgotten essay on why Jews become intellectuals. An Iranian grandmaster claims to have beaten an Israeli chess record after playing 614 people simultaneously…
Does the Coen Brothers’ “True Grit” draw on ancient Indo-European myth? Forward contributor Zackary Sholem Berger translates two poems, “My Pedigree” by Moyshe Nadir and “Herring Barrels” by Dvoyre Fogel, in the latest issue of Eleven Eleven. Israeli musician Avi Avital has become the first mandolinist to be nominated for a Grammy award in the…
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