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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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For Israel, an extraordinary summit reveals a path to coexistence
While the world pays more attention to an actor slapping a comedian, something remarkable and long unimaginable is happening in Israel. Four Arab leaders are visiting, representing the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain, along with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. And the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates is sounding like…
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It was the strangest Oscars in recent memory. Was it also the least Jewish?
The slap heard round the world stole the thunder of an evening that ended with an iconic moment of silent applause. And yet, it is the Flash’s shattering of the sound barrier that stays with me. The 94th Academy Awards featured, for the first time, an audience-polled segment ranking iconic sequences in film. As picked…
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Like Albert Camus, Zelenskyy has learned to resist the plague of the absurd
When the novel coronavirus claimed the world’s attention in 2020, so too did a novel by Albert Camus. With the quickening of the pandemic, “The Plague” became an item almost as essential as toilet paper and facemasks on both sides of the Atlantic. In France, 1,700 copies of “La Peste” were sold in January 2020…
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The Jewish jazz master who Hunter S. Thompson thought could cure any ailment
I first met Herbie Mann in January 1979, when I noticed him bursting out of a phone booth in the parking lot of Tower Records in L.A. It wasn’t the noted jazz flutist in the flesh, of course, but rather the image of him on a six-foot-tall cover of his new album, “Super Mann,” which…
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Biden, Putin, Zelenskyy, Penn — and the true nature of obscenity
Let’s talk about what’s obscene. First, consider what President Joe Biden considers “obscene.” “Putin has the gall to say he is “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. This lie isn’t just cynical. It is obscene,” Biden declared in a speech in Warsaw, and later tweeted. How so, one might ask? “President Zelenskyy was democratically elected. He is Jewish —…
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How Madeleine Albright downplayed then came to embrace her Jewish heritage
Albright eventually came to terms with her Jewish past past, while remaining an observant Episcopalian
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Are public Supreme Court confirmation hearings rooted in antisemitism?
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court and the first Black woman to be nominated, just completed two days of intense, and at times racially loaded, questioning in front of Congress about her qualifications for the role. In recent years, these widely-publicized hearings have become a form of political theater, with…
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‘I cry for the girls, for my father and myself’ — Isidore Abramowitz and the legend of the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy
Why am I telling this story? Friends gently ask if I really want to do this. My frail 90-year-old brother fears for “our father’s good name.” His experience in the fire has been partially documented, and suspicion already cast and mercifully forgotten. Why revive it now? The obvious answer is that I have a few…
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Oscar-nominated ‘Bullies’ documentary opens up a much-needed conversation
Jay Rosenblatt’s “When We Were Bullies,” the Oscar-nominated documentary short film that explores how bullying continues to affect its perpetrators, couldn’t be more timely. Though the incident in question took place more than half a century ago in a Brooklyn schoolyard, it haunts the filmmaker and many of his fellow classmates who were fifth graders…
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The surprisingly Jewish history of the Rorschach inkblot test
April 2 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Hermann Rorschach, the Swiss psychoanalyst who propounded the Rorschach inkblot test, still used as a means of evaluating mental conditions. The Rorschach test immediately attracted strong support from Jewish clinicians. These included Françoise Minkowska-Brokman, of Polish ancestry, who introduced the test in France as well…
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Two hundred artworks later, has Bob Dylan finally painted his masterpiece?
Does Bob Dylan write his songs in black and white or in color? This is just one question of many that occur to a viewer after spending a few hours with the 200-odd visual artworks that comprise “Bob Dylan Retrospectrum,” on exhibit through April 17 at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum on the…
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Most Popular
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Fast Forward Rep. Max Miller says driver called him a ‘dirty Jew’ and threatened to kill his family. A local doctor turned himself in.
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News As Israel attacks, what is life like for Jews in Iran?
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News An Alabama millionaire offered Jews $50,000 to move to his town. 16 years later, what’s left?
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Culture Why is Israel’s attack on Iran called ‘Rising Lion’ — and what does the Bible have to do with it?
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Fast Forward Trump meets gratitude, criticism after claiming total destruction of Iran’s nuclear program
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Opinion The US and Israel could topple the Iranian regime. They should choose negotiation instead
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Opinion Bombing Iran, Donald Trump is triggering a tragedy that Thucydides foretold long ago
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Fast Forward US bombs 3 sites in Iran, joining Israel’s fight against Iranian nuclear program
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