Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The day no one wanted Elvis — but my grandfather
I knew that my grandfather interviewed Elvis. But until recently, that’s about all I knew. When Ad Age published an obituary for its former editor Fred Danzig (whom I called Papa Fred), it said he was the first entertainment reporter to interview Presley. Growing up I heard Papa Fred was the first East Coast reporter to…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time (1-25)
For as long as there have been moving pictures, there have been Jews. This isn’t really saying much, as the medium of film is millennia newer than the People of the Book. And yet, while Jews had an outsized role in shaping Hollywood, Jewish content wasn’t always visible onscreen. The major stars of the silent…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time (26-50)
26. The Critic (1963) – Oscar winner, animation short subject, 1964 It’s only 3 minutes and 24 seconds long, but Mel Brooks’ constantly commenting old man character makes it timeless. We get the running, stream-of- consciousness thoughts of a 71-year-old-man (in a voice that might make him a cousin of the 2,000-year-old-man) as he watches…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time (51-75)
51. Goodfellas (1990) – “He’s not Jewish! Do you know how these people live?” “Goodfellas” is about a Sicilian crime family, but the main character is half-Irish and marries a Jewish woman, Karen Friedman (Lorraine Bracco). The Friedmans aren’t the Meyer Lansky Murder, Inc. type of Jew; these are run-of-the-mill Long Island Jews. The contrast…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time (76-100)
76. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) – The afterlife What’s the Jewish afterlife like? Rabbinic literature has painted a vivid picture — copious carbuncles, 600,000 angels, the works — but in the final seconds of their most underrated film, the Coen Brothers venture a different guess. Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is about to…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time (101-125)
101. A Serious Man (2009) – Danny meets with the Rabbi Bar mitzvah boy Danny is stoned, but has navigated his rite of passage successfully and, as the movie approaches its bleak climax, he is allowed into old Rabbi Marshak’s inner sanctum. There, the old, white-bearded rabbi, with an almost inscrutably European accent delivers a…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time In a rare Lumet comedy, Jews meet an unexpected landsman
Comedy was never Sidney Lumet’s strong suit. If there was any humor at all in his greatest films — such as “The Verdict,” “Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “The Pawnbroker” or “12 Angry Men” — it was typically served up as black and acidic as day-old diner coffee. And yet, my father — whose deep…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time A scene that was so Jewish it wound up on the cutting-room floor
Can a scene be too Jewish to film? That was an issue I had to face when I was directing “The Chosen,” based on Chaim Potok’s famed book. It was a very hot summer in Brooklyn and on the first day of filming I had planned many setups for the opening baseball game between two groups…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time How Barbra Streisand remade the world for Jewish girls
To be a 13-year-old movie geek in the 1960s, one who was female and Jewish, meant a daily immersion in whitewashed ethnicity. Millie Perkins, a gentile, was cast as the lead in “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Susan Kohner, whose mother was the great Mexican actress Lupita Tovar, played the biracial daughter of Juanita Moore,…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time In ‘Call Me by Your Name,’ a scene of Jewish (and gay) discretion
Luca Guadagnino’s lush Italian masterpiece, “Call Me by Your Name,” is full of romantic subtleties: long lingering looks, brief touches, meaning-laden passages read aloud. But nothing is ever fully overt, in keeping with the central family’s European, intellectual sensibilities; anything otherwise would be gauche. As a result, though nearly every major character in the film…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time How Ernst Lubitsch punched Hitler in the face
How dare he? This appears to be the consensus critics came to upon watching “To Be or Not to Be,” a comedy set in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, in 1942. How dare the director, Ernst Lubitsch, find humor in fascism? How dare he milk war for entertainment? How dare he be so callous, so inappropriate, so tasteless?…
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The 125 greatest Jewish movie scenes of all time How the most over-the-top bar mitzvah movie taught Jews who they shouldn’t be
I don’t know if it makes anyone else’s top 10, but “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” is one of the most Jewish movies I’ve ever seen. Or the most Jewish movie I’ve seen 120 times. I worked as an usher at Chicago’s Carnegie Theater when it premiered, in 1974, and still know it by heart….
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