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.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO