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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Trump’s new social media platform about ‘truth’ doesn’t seem safe for Jews
Having been banned from most mainstream social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Donald Trump has had to get creative with his communications. Thursday, he announced his newest plan — his own social media app, called TRUTH Social, which is currently slated to roll…
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October 28: Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitic?
This conversation will take place on Thursday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m. ET / 4:30 p.m. PT. Register here. It’s a graph that seems almost impossible to calculate, an advanced mathematical problem that must include 5,000 years of history, centuries of bigotry, humiliations, oppression, expulsions, political manipulations and a single piece of land on which…
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February 1-17: Black Jewish History/Black Jewish Futures Month
This series will take place online over four sessions in Februrary. Register here. We’re proud to partner with 92nd Street Y to present “Black Jewish History/Black Jewish Futures Month,” an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the lives of Black Jews in the United States. Throughout the month of February, Black Jewish leaders will lead online…
The Latest
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Metatron? MarkCo? Betting on Facebook’s new (Jewish) name
Mazel tov, Mr. Zuckerberg, it’s a metaverse! The social media giant Facebook, which has come to include former competitors WhatsApp and Instagram, is planning to change its corporate name to better reflect the wide variety of its offerings, The Verge reported Tuesday. The move is meant to highlight Zuckerberg as the architect of a “metaverse”…
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When Pancho Villa attacked the U.S. in 1916, he was after the head of this Jewish merchant
When Pancho Villa and his troops raided Columbus, New Mexico in 1916—one of the only times in the 20th century that a foreign army ever invaded the continental United States— the famous Mexican revolutionary had only one goal: to bring back the head of a Lithuanian-born Jewish merchant named Sam Ravel. Villa’s men ransacked the…
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I, too, like pumpkin spice and leaves — can a Jewish girl do Christian Girl Autumn?
If hot girl summer is all about living large, wearing little and doing whatever you want, Christian Girl Autumn is the inverse; it’s all about chunky sweaters, big scarves and carefully coiffed curls. I, too, love autumn; I’m a Libra, and this is my season. I’ve had pumpkin pie instead of cake for my birthday…
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How Judah Benjamin — a Jewish Confederate slave-owner who decried slavery — came to embody so many contradictions
In 1842, Judah P. Benjamin stood inside a New Orleans courtroom and declared that “slavery is against the law of nature.” It was part of his winning argument as to why an insurance company didn’t have to pay the slave ship Creole’s owners after its cargo of enslaved people revolted and escaped. Meanwhile, less than…
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The Asian-Jewish film series ‘LUNAR’ is back for a second season. Watch an episode here
Why are there so few Asian Jews in the movies? What does it mean for a TV show to be “authentic?” What’s up with “Mulan?” All these topics come up on this episode of LUNAR, a film series on Asian-Jewish identity which packs a lot into each of its segments. The project dates 2020, when…
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All the history Mel Brooks will cover in his new ‘History of the World’ (probably)
It’s finally happening. After 40 years, Mel Brooks will give us the long-promised “History of the World Part II.” He has a lot of catching up to do. While Brooks, who will deliver the sequel as a Hulu variety show with the help of Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and others, teased some segments of the…
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Why having faith in James Bond can feel a little like believing in God
There is a scene about halfway through “No Time To Die,” the latest James Bond movie, where Bond is trapped in a locked room on a sinking boat in the middle of an ocean. Like everybody else in the theater, I had no doubt he would escape. This is a film that opens with Bond…
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In this brilliant exhibit, you can’t look at the art unless you let it look at you
At first glance, there’s nothing explicitly Jewish about Barbara Kruger’s work. Yet after viewing “Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You,” the current retrospective of her five decades of work at the Art Institute of Chicago, on view through January 24, 2022, certain Jewish themes emerge: the value of omnivorous reading, high and…
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