Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya ZaxOpinion Editor
By Talya Zax
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Culture Harold Prince Produced Broadway Musicals — Now He’s the Subject of One
If you love “West Side Story,” “”Cabaret,” or “Sweeney Todd,” you love Harold Prince: the theatrical producer and director collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on each of those beloved shows. That’s not enough to convince you? He also produced the original “Fiddler on the Roof,” directed and co-conceived the 1998 dramatization of Leo Frank’s trial and…
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Culture New Jewish Literary Journal Pays Tribute to Vilna Ghetto Heroes
The first volume of the Jewish Book Council’s new annual literary journal, Paper Brigade, isn’t exactly subtle in its messaging: its cover, designed by Katherine Messenger, features sketches of an attractive set of bookish people utterly lost in Jewish literature. They seem to occupy a bubble of calmness. One woman sits absorbed in Anita Diamant’s…
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Culture ‘Mozart in the Jungle,’ An Italian Jewish Celebration, and 5 Other Things to Watch, Read, and Do This Weekend
Hanukkah is coming, which means, for many, some serious winter nesting. Before you huddle up for the holiday, partake in some of the last best moments of Jewish culture in 2016. 1) Binge on theater, new and old This week and next herald the openings of Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg’s new play “The Babylon…
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Culture Rachel Kushner Wrote About Jerusalem Refugee Camp For NYT Mag — Here’s What Happened Behind the Scenes
Last week, novelist Rachel Kushner published an essay called “We Are Orphans Here: Life and death in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian refugee camp,” recounting her time in the Shuafat Refugee Camp, in The New York Times Magazine. The essay details Kushner’s experience in Shuafat with a local Palestinian community organizer named Baha Nababta as her guide….
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Culture At Launch of Forward Anthology, A Celebration of Yiddish Fiction
Should you have happened, the evening of December 5th, to be taking a stroll on Manhattan’s 16th street, allowing yourself a romantic sigh over the Christmas trees winking in the windows, you would likely not have guessed you were especially close to a gathering of giddy Yiddishists. And yet you were; the Center for Jewish…
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Culture Writers of ‘Vagina Monologues,’ ‘The Vibrator Play’ to Feature in D.C. Theater’s American History Cycle
Last week, Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage announced a significant new initiative: over the next decade, the theater will commission 25 plays by 25 writers, one for each decade of American history. Playwrights who have already signed on to the project include Eve Ensler, Sarah Ruhl and Aaron Posner. Fittingly, given that the theater is located…
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Culture Bob Dylan Will Have Acceptance Speech at Nobel Prize Ceremony — He Just Won’t Be Reading it
In the latest installment of the Bob Dylan Nobel Prize Saga — which, we would note, gets less interesting as it gets more unnecessarily complex — the Nobel Foundation has announced Dylan is sending a speech to be read at the December 10 presentation of the Nobel Prizes in Stockholm. Like all Nobel laureates, Dylan…
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The Schmooze LISTEN: Regina Spektor’s Hamilton Mixtape Track is Absolutely Dreamy
We were thrilled to report Regina Spektor would be putting her own spin on the “Hamilton” song “Dear Theodosia” for “The Hamilton Mixtape,” and we’re even more excited now we’ve heard the final version. Listen to her honey-toned version, featuring Ben Folds, below.
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Culture In the face of conflict over assimilation, appropriation, colonialism and hegemony, a plea for human dignity through dance
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Yiddish איראַניש־אַמעריקאַנער ייִדן זעען האָפֿענונג אין טראָמפּס פּלאַן אַראָפּצוזעצן דעם רעזשיםIranian American Jews see hope in Trump’s plan for regime change
אין גרייט־נעק און לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס הייבן איראַנישע ייִדן אָן חלומען וועגן אַ רײַזע אין זייער היימלאַנד.
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Culture It’s Purim in Tel Aviv — but in the shelter there are few costumes in sight
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