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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No, she wasn’t Jewish, but Betty White had a very Jewish century
There was nothing Jewish about Betty White. I mean yes, she had a blind date with Carl Reiner in 2010 on “Hot in Cleveland” when they were both 88. Yes, she played one of four retired “Golden Girls” living together in Florida, none of whom were Jewish but, y’know. And yes, she was on the…
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How an antisemitic attack gave rise to a pro-IDF social media movement
After two Brooklyn 21-year-olds wearing sweatshirts emblazoned with the logo for the Israel Defense Forces were allegedly attacked by two men who called them “dirty Jews,” a social media movement is striking back. The #IDFshirtchallenge asks users to post pictures of themselves proudly sporting their IDF apparel on both Twitter and Instagram, and figures such…
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22 absolutely on-the-mark pop culture predictions for 2022
2021 was a year of new beginnings — not just for our newly reopened society, but also for the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to mutate into increasingly scary-sounding novel Greek letter variants. And so, we end 2021 on a note of uncertainty. In a year like this, when Taylor Swift surprised us with a 10-minute…
The Latest
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In ‘Curb,’ not even Alexander Vindman is safe from Larry David’s warped worldview
After 11 seasons of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David, the master of his own moral universe, finally found a worthy foil in America’s other most upstanding Jew. On the show’s season finale, which aired Sunday, David met Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, the man who blew the whistle on President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr…
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What we look at when we look at Joan Didion
It’s the first thing I think about when I think about Joan Didion: not the extraordinary grace of her storytelling or her magical sense of language — those come right after — but a portrait of her, taken in 1996 by the great Jewish photographer Irving Penn. Joan Didion by Irving Penn pic.twitter.com/KvqkIdLSHa — Daniel_F_Brami…
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How the son of an Auschwitz survivor made it (really) big on Broadway
This season, the hottest director on Broadway is a 75-year-old son of Holocaust survivors. Fresh off “Mrs. Doubtfire,” the musical adaptation of the Robin Williams vehicle, Jerry Zaks is putting the finishing touches on “The Music Man,” which opens in February starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. “Yeah, it’s unbelievable,” said Zaks remarking on his…
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Does ‘A Christmas Carol’ have an antisemitic message or a Jewish humanist one?
The name Ebenezer is Hebrew, deriving from the phrase eben ha-ezer, meaning “stone of the help”
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The Holocaust robbed them of their stories; this artist is bringing them back to life
In his new graphic nonfiction narrative book “When I Grow Up, the Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers,” author and New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein deftly gives life to the never-told stories of six Jewish teenagers in the lost world of Yiddishuania, formerly Poland/Lithuania. In the 1930s, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, then based…
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What ever became of the Hasid from Japan — a quintessentially New York Jewish story
In my work as a reporter in the New York Bureau of a Japanese newspaper, I used to periodically interview Henry Kissinger. Every couple of years, for nearly two decades, I’d accompany a colleague from Japan and pay a visit to Kissinger Associates on Park Avenue. In much of East Asia, Kissinger is still viewed…
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Pee-wee Herman, a Hallmark Hanukkah and more movies to watch this Christmas
This year for sure, we all fervently hoped we would be able to return to the dim, dank and sticky sanctuary of our local multiplex and engage in that most hallowed Jewish custom: A movie on Christmas. Man plans, Hashem laughs. With a new, super-transmissible variant of the coronavirus rampaging through the world, many still…
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Why Bob Einstein — aka Marty Funkhouser from ‘Curb,’ aka Super Dave, aka Officer Judy — contained multitudes
Bob Einstein was a comedic test case in nature versus nurture. In the end, comedy was what came naturally. The son of vaudevillian Parkyakarkus (né Harry Einstein), who was a crackup on the radio and around the dinner table, Einstein had a showbiz pedigree. And yet, he rejected the call of entertainment until he was…
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