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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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‘Beyond Insane’ Biblical Paintings
My artist friends think I’m crazy,” said Archie Rand, who is the first to admit that his newest project is “beyond insane.” Indeed, Rand’s series is arguably the most ambitious Jewish art enterprise, perhaps ever: 613 canvases, one per commandment. Surrounded by stacks upon stacks of paintings in his studio, Rand is easy to compare…
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Two Books for the Price of One
Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes By T Cooper Dutton, 416 pages, $24.95. * * *| Things are not what always what they seem in the world of T Cooper. To begin with, there is the title of her second novel, “Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes.” This sort of giddy riffing, where subsequent clauses…
The Latest
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Remembering How the Yiddish Theater Turned Into Broadway
Last fall, a musician friend who plays on Broadway took me to see the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre’s revival of “On Second Avenue,” a revue chronicling the glory days of Yiddish theater in New York City. As one might expect, the show was heavy on nostalgia. “But the Yiddish theater didn’t really die,” my friend commented…
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ROOFTOP RENAISSANCE
251 West 100th Street, New York, N.Y., 212-865-0600. Scribblers on the Roof: Contemporary American Jewish Fiction Edited by Melvin Jules Bukiet and David G. Roskies Persea Books, 352 pages, $15.95. * * *| At the turn of the past century, New York City’s Lower East Side was more crowded than Calcutta, and out of that…
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Taking Care of Husbands
A husband suspects his wife of adultery, a capital crime. He takes her before the priest, who makes her drink a witches’ brew of holy water and dust from the tabernacle floor. She makes a solemn declaration: If she is innocent, the bitter water will have no effect, but if guilty, she will experience acute…
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A History Of Style
Vogue magazine did not exist in the 15th century, but this didn’t stop Europeans of that era from keeping up to date on cutting-edge trends in clothing and fashion. Curious about the customs of people living in other parts of the world, early modern Europeans read costume books and travelogues that had images depicting styles…
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June 9
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD Phoebe Cohen came to New York from Liverpool, England, to find her father — and have him arrested for abandoning his wife and family. Though she searched high and low for him, she wasn’t able to find him until, purely by chance, she saw Brooklyn resident Max Cohen on…
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Looking Back June 2, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD It’s a known fact that many young sweatshop workers are terribly jealous of Singer sewing machine agents, who make good money, are well dressed and perform work that doesn’t seem very strenuous. But the reality is that they are enslaved to the company. Though it seems like they’re partners,…
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Searching for Answers, After the Fire
Triangle By Katharine Weber Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $23. * * *| ‘Triangle” is a prose cousin of certain one-act plays, those taut dramatic exercises in which just a few characters, engaging in conversation, conjure grand notions. (Think of “No Exit,” “Waiting for Godot,” “Doubt.”) At its best, Katharine Weber’s new novel has…
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A Very Special Episode: ‘Everwood’ Series Finale Has the Rite Stuff
The fictional television town of Everwood, Colo., has no synagogue and no rabbi, not even a fictional one. Its leading citizen is played by the palpably WASPy Treat Williams, and its network — The WB — gave birth to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Beauty and the Geek.” So it might be the last place,…
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Good Guys and Bad Guys
Who are the good guys? That’s what every well-meaning European, left-wing European, intellectual European, liberal European always wants to know, first and foremost. Who are the good guys in the film and who are the bad guys. In this respect Vietnam was easy: The Vietnamese people were the victims, and the Americans were the bad…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
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Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Explainer: What the Israeli occupation of Gaza would mean for Israelis and Palestinians
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Yiddish אויסשטעלונג אין אונגערן — רמזים פֿון הילצערנער שיל פֿון 18טן יאָרהונדערטExhibit in Hungary displays remnants of 18th century wooden synagogue
אינעם 18טן יאָרהונדערט איז די קהילה אין נאַזנאַ געווען די צווייט גרעסטע אין גאַנץ טראַנסילוואַניע.
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News Is the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism the new Red Scare?
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Opinion Trump’s cuts are a war on Jewish literature, thought and history itself
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