Simi Horwitz is a feature writer and film reviewer based in New York City. In 2022, she received first place for film criticism from the Society for Feature Journalism, and in 2023, a New York Press Club Award for an Entertainment News feature; and three Los Angeles Press Club Awards, including first place for film criticism — all for pieces published in the Forward.
Simi Horwitz
By Simi Horwitz
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Culture The Jews of Al-Jazeera
Broadcasting icon Dave Marash is all too familiar with the label “self-hating Jew,” and it’s a phrase he holds in the deepest contempt. “I’m not a pious or practicing Jew, but I’ve always identified myself as Jewish,” he said during a phone interview from his home in New Mexico. “My humor is Jewish — very…
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Culture Martin Duberman’s Radical 85-Year Journey Through White America
‘The older I get, the more radical I get.” So says Martin Duberman, the strikingly youthful-looking 85-year-old author, activist, CUNY professor emeritus and playwright, whose groundbreaking civil rights drama “In White America” is being remounted — with some revisions — on its 50th anniversary. “Like all political theater, it’s a call to action,” Duberman says….
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Culture Four Decades Later, They’re Still Banking on ‘The Rothschilds’
Book writer Sherman Yellen and lyricist Sheldon Harnick say the timing is spot-on for a new look at their 1970 musical “The Rothschilds,” which has been revised and dubbed “Rothschild & Sons” for its October run with The York Theatre Company, in New York. The Tony-nominated musical, with a score composed by the late Jerry…
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Music When Alvin Ailey Choreographs the Holocaust
With the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater presenting a Holocaust inspired piece, “No Longer Silent,” at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, the iconic African American company has branched into new territory. In fact, it’s unprecedented, explained its artistic director Robert Battle, who choreographed the piece. Its musical score was composed by Erwin…
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Culture Why Is a Formerly Secular Woman Like Her Running a Chabad Center?
At the age of 13, Keren Blum told her parents that she was an agnostic. Because she also became a vegetarian at that time, her parents, Conservative Jews, were troubled by what they perceived as rebelliousness. They tried to make Judaism joyous and meaningful for her — in vain, at least initially. Blum completed her…
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Culture Jewish Enviro-Artists Have the Whole World in Their Hands
Mierle Laderman Ukeles seemed overwhelmed. She had just returned from a month-long stay in Israel at the height of the horrors, and was now playing catch-up as the official, but unsalaried, artist-in-residence at the New York City Sanitation Department, a gig she has held since 1977. As a longtime champion of the department, Ukeles has…
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Culture ‘Bearded Lady’ and ‘Gender Terrorist’ Take Performance Art Beyond the Fringes
Stomping across the stage in a disheveled blond wig, cheesy pink boots, and a jean skirt adorned with raccoon tails, performance artist Rose Wood is every bit the trailer-park hooker attempting to sell her wares. Enraged and desperate, she strips off her torn and tied T-shirt, revealing nude breasts, and when that doesn’t work, she…
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Culture ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Turns 50 With an All-Star Celebration
Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre (aka Folksbiene) doesn’t seem too surprised — indeed, he sounds matter-of-fact — that the iconic theater is marking its 100th birthday and still going strong. But, he acknowledges its founders, who opened the theater’s doors on the Lower East Side for Yiddish speaking Eastern European immigrants, would…
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