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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Mother to George Costanza, wife of Mr. Potato Head, Estelle Harris had a comic style all her own
Estelle Harris (born Nussbaum) who died April 2 at age 93, proved that sources of laughter in American Jewish television sitcoms are incisive self-awareness and time-honored tribulations. Harris was paired with two of the loudest, most obstreperous Jewish comedians of the modern era, Jerry Stiller in TV’s “Seinfeld” and Don Rickles in Disney’s “Toy Story”…
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Art How painting the Torah brought the director of ‘The Chosen’ closer to Judaism
On my iPad, I’ve been drawing a visual response to this week’s Torah portion and the Midrash about it. I do this every week and, over the last few years, I’ve made five sets of these drawings. The first set started on a whim. I had learned some odd stories about the first parsha Beresheit….
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A paragon of erudition and a vital poet, he captured the American gay Jewish experience
The American Jewish poet and translator Richard Howard, who died March 31 at age 92, proved that in a literary career, timing is of paramount importance. To be born less than two weeks before the 1929 stock market crash to an impoverished Jewish family in Cleveland might have seemed unlucky. Yet Howard was promptly adopted…
The Latest
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April 26: The Forward at 125: A conversation with the four living Editors in Chief of our storied publication
This discussion will take place on Wednesday, April 26 at 7 p.m. ET./ 4 p.m. PT. The editors of the English Forward from 1990 to today, together for the first time, will talk about our history, present, and future. What would the Forward’s founder, Ab Cahan, make of today’s digital report, and of American Jewry?…
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How the Jewish calendar got coded — and how ingenious coders made it happen
Humanity is currently engaged in a massive, civilization-sized project to digitize all knowledge. You may have heard about this. The project is huge, but it’s not unified; contained within it are thousands of smaller projects, each devoted to digitization in a specific field. Some of these fields have developed slowly, while others have zoomed ahead….
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How a legendary New Wave band got a new jolt of Jewish humor
We’re entering spring and lo and behold — wonders of wonders! — Devo once again walks among us. The band, which gestated in Akron, Ohio, as an agitprop art/music project during the early 1970s and came to fame a decade later during the punk/new wave era, is back, doing four shows in May. That’s one…
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Does Goliath deserve his bad reputation? A new spin on an old villain
Does Goliath, the giant notorious for his biblical confrontation with David, deserve sympathy? The latest book by Jonathan Friedmann, professor of Jewish music history at the Academy for Jewish Religion California, explains why he may be getting some. “Goliath as Gentle Giant” examines the recent phenomenon of humanizing depictions in popular culture of David’s opponent….
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April 25: 1-on-1 with Julia Haart of My Unorthodox Life
This conversation will take place on Tuesday, April 25 at 7 p.m. ET./ 4 p.m. PT. Julia Haart is a self-made business woman, designer and author. She was raised in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. At age 42 she fled, changed her name and without any formal education or background in fashion launched her career as…
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A stunning documentary recalls the many times Babyn Yar was forgotten
Sergei Loznitsa's "Babi Yar. Context," grapples with events many would rather not discuss
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What the 1950 census can tell us about Jewish life in America
Jewish genealogists and researchers are eagerly awaiting midnight April 1, when the U.S. 1950 decennial census will be made public by the National Archives and Records Administration. Seventy-two years to the day the enumeration began, the entries of the 151 million Americans tallied will be made accessible online. The data will give a snapshot of…
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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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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Looking Forward My artist grandmother nearly made aliyah. I don’t know what she’d think of Israel today
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Film & TV Is this Apple TV thriller hasbara — or societal critique?