This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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CAMPAIGN CONFIDENTIAL
In an unprecedented effort to boost young Jewish voter turnout, a Jewish Democratic group is circulating an edgy, animated Internet video that relies on biting humor and, critics say, unfair anti-Republican stereotypes. Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, says his group commissioned the satirical cartoon, “Bubbie Versus the GOP,” in order…
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After 25 Years, Soviet Emigrés Still Strangers
This is the first in a three-part series on the challenges faced in America by Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Her freshly painted nails and carefully coiffed hair give Maria Abramov the air of a women who has things in order. Sitting in the clean back room of her…
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October 15, 2004
100 Years Ago • When Mrs. Cohen walked into Joseph Schwartz’s 125th Street tailor shop to have her purple dress cleaned, Schwartz told her it would cost $2 to make it “look like new.” When Mrs. Cohen returned the following day, she picked up the dress and put $1.50 on the counter. Schwartz immediately jumped…
The Latest
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The Great White (Jewish, Gay) Way
Watching the PBS documentary “Broadway: The American Musical” is like watching “Cats”: You meet lots of interesting characters, you hear several catchy tunes and you enjoy a few hours of lighthearted entertainment. But when the lights come up at the end, the whole experience feels like less than the sum of its parts. That’s not…
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All the World Is a Stage
Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical By Andrea Most Harvard University Press, 253 pages, $29.95. * * *| Why has a disproportionate percentage of Jews in the United States gravitated toward the entertainment industry? Were enterprising and talented Jews able to make popular culture an empire of their own because the non-Jews deemed theater,…
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The Story of a Life
World War II went on for six straight years, but sometimes it seems to me that it lasted only one long night, from which I awoke a completely different person. Sometimes I felt that it wasn’t I who was in the war, but someone else, someone very close to me, and that he’s going to…
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The Privilege of Fiction
the israeli film festival, now in its 20th year, is just one chance that new yorkers have to glimpse the new israeli cinema, which continues to make inroads here despite the region’s political and economic upheavals. recent, critically admired commercial releases of the past year include ra’anan alexandrowicz’s biting satire, “james’ journey to jerusalem” —…
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Our Evil Imaginations
The story of the Flood is preceded and followed by unkind remarks of God on the nature of human imagination. In Genesis 6:5, at the end of last week’s portion, we are told: And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of…
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The Devil Maid Me Do It
The plot is simple, even seductively coy, but it reverberates into the year ahead. In Isaac Bashevis Singer’s only Yiddish play, “Devil’s Play,” it seems the devil is bored and is looking for a little fun with an easy victim. He settles on a remote shtetl, Frampol, where he finds a happily married older couple,…
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Your Morning Coffee, Served Just and Right
What is the most valuable item of international trade in the world today? No surprise for anyone who’s read the headlines for the past decade or two: It’s oil. But you might be surprised to discover that the second most valuable item is coffee. Oil and coffee — that’ll add a bit of perspective to…
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Tale of Twos Marks an Activist’s Life
Richard Fisher, a senior partner at Fisher Brothers, and his mother, Emily Fisher Landau, were honored at the September 22 Top Dog Gala, which raised $800,000 for The Animal Medical Center, a state-of-the-art facility that treats more than 50,000 patients each year. To the delight of the 500 black-tie guests in the Waldorf-Astoria’s Grand Ballroom,…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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