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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Online, Zelenskyy has become a sex symbol. It’s getting weird.
“I know this is not the time, but I have the biggest crush on this man,” one commenter admitted. The video in question? Ukrainian president and former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now stony-faced, speaking to the press amidst Russian attacks. During times of great crisis — and we’ve had plenty in the past two years —…
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How a career in performance prepared Volodymyr Zelenskyy for this moment in Ukraine
One of Karl Marx’s best-known lines appears in “The Eighteenth Brumaire,” his merciless vivisection of the revolution of 1848 in France. Torn between crying and laughing at the words and actions of the French revolutionaries, who seemed to see themselves as characters in a remake of the earlier revolution of 1789, Marx panned their performance….
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In Ukraine, a long history of Russian crimes against Jews
Tragic events now unfolding in Ukraine echo a history of Russian human rights offenses against Jews in that country. Just over a century ago, between 1918 and 1921, tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were murdered, tortured and raped in hundreds of pogroms by marauders, some of them Russian. Historians place the number of people…
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Claiming “De-Nazification,” Putin’s actions recall other Nazi crimes
As Russia invaded Ukraine, beginning at five in the morning, Vladimir Putin’s statement that his purpose was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine clearly disgusted Ukraine’s first-ever Jewish President. Volodymyr Zelenskyy — whose three great-uncles were murdered in the Holocaust — responded on Twitter that Russia attacked Ukraine just “as Nazi Germany did.” “As of today, our countries…
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In the face of tragedy, Rep. Jamie Raskin is an optimist
Despite the gravity of the moment, Rep. Jamie Raskin seemed to be having a great time during Trump’s impeachment trial in early 2021. A former professor of constitutional law, Raskin appeared, at moments, to have forgotten that he wasn’t in the classroom, gesturing as he spoke impassionedly about the meaning of the Constitution. It seemed…
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I was Jerry Lewis’ secretary; I believe what people are saying about him
Recent stories about Jerry Lewis having harassed and assaulted actresses brought back memories I’d chosen to forget from the year and a half I worked as the comic’s secretary. Twenty-three and new to Hollywood, I was excited to be hired by the internationally-known star who played an adorable shlemiel in movies and onstage. But I…
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‘The Automat’ remembers when a nickel could buy the American dream
It was my grandmother who tipped me off to “The Automat,” a new documentary about the rise and fall of Horn & Hardart restaurants. It’s no wonder why. These eateries, which for over a century drew a diverse crowd of New Yorkers and Philadelphians with the promise of cheap, quality food and mechanical pageantry, seem…
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At 78, a long-anticipated theatrical debut (with thanks to Edward Albee)
I’m 78 years old, and I’m a budding, soon-to-be-produced playwright. To explain how this happened, we need to go back 16 years. “I’d like to think,” Edward Albee said to me, “that maybe I’ve made people think about things a little bit.” It was the fall of 2005 and we were sitting in his TriBeCa…
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How the Wild West was won (with the help of some little-known Jews)
Before Gene Autry. Before Roy Rogers. Before all that, there was Bronco Billy, a star of the 1903 film “The Great Train Robbery,” which is widely considered to be the first American western. Bronco Billy was played by Gilbert M. Anderson, better known to his family as Maxwell Aronson, the sixth child of Henry and…
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He made Moon Knight Jewish. He doesn’t care if Disney+ has other ideas.
'If he’s not Jewish because there’s a good artistic reason, that's perfectly OK,' said Moon Knight writer Alan Zelenetz
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How Putin and Trump loyalists are illegitimately redefining the word legitimate (and language itself)
The word “legitimate” is suddenly hot — and it’s being increasingly used to justify the unjustifiable. In the recent rare and unified front of Republicans and Democrats, rushing to sanction Russia as it begins an invasion of Ukraine, it may be convenient to stop thinking about the Republican National Committee’s statement that the Jan. 6…
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