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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What to watch, listen and read to understand the war in Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began February 24, is the largest military action in Europe since WWII. Yet it can be difficult to parse breaking news without an understanding of the history behind it. If you’re looking to deepen your understanding of the situation on the ground, this round-up of things to read, watch and…
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Architect of memorial synagogue at Babyn Yar: Bombing “leaves me speechless, numb and powerless”
In May, the Forward spoke to architect Manuel Herz about a new synagogue he’d designed at the site of Babyn Yar (for years commonly referred to as Babi Yar), where SS officers and Ukrainian allies murdered 34,000 Jews in 1941. Herz modeled the structure after the colorful wooden synagogues that once dotted the Pale of…
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What ‘The Merchant of Venice’ loses when no one laughs
Clothes do a lot of work in Arin Arbus’s new staging of “The Merchant of Venice.” Antonio (Alfredo Narciso), the play’s titular merchant, dresses like a tech founder just back from some problematic retreat: black blazer, ostentatious cross, too-white velcro sneakers. The heiress Portia (a sprightly Isabel Arraiza) issues commands to her underlings while prancing…
The Latest
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Poets join together for Ukraine
Over 800 people from all over the world came to hear Ukrainian poetry in the original and in translation in a swiftly organized online reading to support writers whose lives are in danger as Russian forces approach. The event, part of a virtual reading series by Words Together Words Apart, offered a window into the…
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Shunned no more? Alan Dershowitz joins Cameo to build a Martha’s Vineyard Chabad house
More Jews than ever are coming to Martha’s Vineyard; Alan Dershowitz doesn’t seem to have many friends among them. In a stroke of genius, the criminal defense attorney is hoping to fill both his needs and the needs of his coreligionists by doing his favorite thing: pontificating on camera. Yes, Dershowitz has a Cameo account…
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As Putin lays siege to Ukraine, memories of life between wars
If you aren’t thinking about a place at all, and then a war starts there, it seems like it came out of the blue — a maniac starts the war; a bunch of people die; the rest of us post on our social media. But wars don’t “break out.” They ripen in plain sight until…
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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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