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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How Neil Diamond’s most personal song chronicled his journey out of Brooklyn
'Brooklyn Roads' begins as an exercise in nostalgia but becomes so much more
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Music A ‘Dachau’ song so shocking and transformative, there’s nothing else like it
Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. “Some white folks think it’s hip to have Blacks in their band….
The Latest
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Audacious and transgressive, Randy Newman’s satire of bigotry still has the power to shock and awe
Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. Lester Maddox’s name doesn’t have a lot of currency today. Maddox is…
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Is the most popular song about New York really a stealth Jewish anthem?
Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. “New York, New York,” the theme song from Martin Scorsese’s musical of…
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Music In 1985, they wrote the granddaddy of all Bible story songs
Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. The staccato opening minor chord progression on keyboards, rhythmic reggae percussion, eerie…
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What’s a Jewish song anyway — and how can you recognize one when you hear it?
Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. What is a Jewish song? Is it one that connects you to…
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Music When pop music’s fascination with Nazi symbols and history went way over the line
Inspired in part by all the Jewish artists on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs, the Forward decided it was time to rank the best Jewish pop songs of all time. You can find the whole list and accompanying essays here. MAGA politicians and talk show hosts with the gall to compare mask…
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Telling the Story: The most important Jewish Civil Rights leader you may not have heard of
This is not a trick question: Who was the most important – or the highest-ranking, or most influential – Jew in the civil rights movement? While many may quickly answer Rabbi Abraham Heschel or the martyrs Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and those with a deeper knowledge of movement history might suggest Martin Luther King’s…
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‘Once We Were Slaves’ examines fluidity of race through a Jewish lens
Have you heard the story of the Jewish mother and children who were born enslaved in the Caribbean and became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York? Professor Laura Arnold Leibman was researching Jewish communities in Barbados when she discovered two small ivory portraits belonging to a Jewish heiress from New York. She traced…
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Books No, Anne Frank’s diary would not be an adequate replacement for ‘Maus’ in Tennessee schools
It would seem counterintuitive that a graphic novel featuring mice and cats as Jews and Nazis would be a more effective Holocaust teaching tool than the diary of a young girl who died in Bergen-Belsen. Yet, after a Tennessee school district unanimously voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” from its eighth grade curriculum due to…
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Is this particular strain of antisemitism and bigotry becoming endemic?
The past two years have made amateur epidemiologists of us all. We have learned that “aerosol” applies to more than hairsprays, that “crushing the curve” means more than slamming a pitch into the bleachers, and that ingesting bleaches will not crush the coronavirus. We have also learned the distinction between pandemic — the exponential explosion…
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News How Jewish can you be in a Boca country club? Wrapping tefillin got a family suspended, lawsuit says
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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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Opinion Trump is forcing liberal Zionists to confront an extraordinarily inconvenient truth
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News ‘Very misguided’: ADL regional board member resigns over organization’s approach to antisemitism and civil rights
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion When it comes to regime change in Iran, Jews should be careful what they wish for
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Fast Forward Once the poster child of the yeshiva reform movement, he now has regrets
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Fast Forward How Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz’s biblical bickering explains the MAGA divide on Israel
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Opinion Zohran Mamdani is right about what ‘intifada’ means — well, kind of
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