Image by Justin Tallis/Getty Images

By Talya Zax January 20, 2017

If you require weekend plans, political and otherwise, the Forward has you covered.

For new reads, look to Peter Hayes’ “Why? Explaining the Holocaust,” released this week, and Joseph Kertes’ novel of war and escape, released last week, “The Afterlife of Stars.” For lighter, faster reads, check out The New York Times Magazine’s profile of reality TV kingpin Andy Cohen, a figure made newly prescient in the age of President Trump, and Ayelet Waldman’s book recommendations, also in the Times.

Wherever you are, if you’re politically inclined, attend one of the many Women’s Marches happening across the country. Yes, the events are demonstrations first and foremost, but the primary event in Washington, D.C. — and others, doubtless, as well — will also contain its fair share of cultural power, with Scarlett Johansson and Gloria Steinem making appearances, among many others.

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In New York, stop by the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the last days of the New York Jewish Film Festival, which runs through Tuesday, January 24. Also stop by Lincoln Center for the last weekend of Richard Greenberg’s “The Babylon Line” — see Forward culture editor Adam Langer’s interview with Greenberg, here — and make a trip to Carnegie Hall to hear the gloriously talented Daniel Barenboim conduct the Staatskkapelle Berlin in Anton Bruckner’s Symphony Cycle.

In Washington, D.C., escape inauguration weekend with a jaunt to the National Gallery of Art — if you can make it through the protesting crowds — to see Barbara Kruger’s “In the Tower,” which closes January 29. Also in D.C., spend Saturday evening at Tikvat Israel Congregation watching the 2014 Israeli film “Zero Motivation.”

Rounding out the weekend’s picks, events in Los Angeles and Chicago: in the former, see a Friday night screening of Charlie Chaplin’s classic Holocaust allegory “The Great Dictator,” and in the latter, attend a night of improv comedy at Anshe Emet.

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