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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Finally, a calendar that embraces the miraculous and circular nature of Jewish time
The past two years, the High Holidays have come late in autumn, requiring several sweaters and rain coats, especially for last year’s outdoor pandemic services. This year, Jews around the world are startled to discover that with September barely underway, we’re closing in on early Rosh Hashanah. Holidays sneak up every year, but Jewish holidays…
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Is the shofar really a musical instrument — and other horned dilemmas that are surprisingly difficult to resolve.
Qol Tamid (Eternal Voice): The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture. Edited by Jonathan L. Friedmann and Joel Gereboff Claremont Press, 358 pages, $27.99 Two kinds of horns mentioned in the Hebrew bible. One, a metal trumpet, is described in great detail. The description of the other, the shofar, is, shall we say, limited? Guess…
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A Black Jewish poet’s call: High Holiday atonement means reckoning with racial injustice
Last year’s High Holidays followed a summer filled with racial justice protests, as many Jewish communities reckoned with their treatment of Jews of color and broader history on issues of race. Amidst this tumult, Aaron Levy Samuels, a co-founder of the media company Blavity, began to write a new poem, titled “Forgiveness.” The poem ties…
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When Jake Tapper dated Monica Lewinsky — and wrote a gross piece about it
Will Jake Tapper be a character on “Impeachment: American Crime Story?” I don’t mean Jake Tapper the respected CNN anchor, but his former self, Jake Tapper the young Beltway reporter, who made a name for himself when he wrote a detailed dispatch from his date with Monica Lewinsky. That Tapper, whose article, published in the…
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How schmaltz, schtick and schteak are bringing back old Jewish New York
Dani Luv is getting a new gig. After 22 years in the basement digs of Sammy’s Roumanian, singing songs like “Strangers With My Wife,” the Israeli keyboard player and insult comic is taking his show to Times Square. Starting on Sept. 16th, he will perform his bawdy Yiddish-inflected act four nights a week at Bacall’s…
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The French Tucker Carlson is Jewish, xenophobic — and maybe a presidential candidate
France has lurched into its annual exodus known as la rentrée. It is the moment when the French, after a long summer at the shore or in the mountains, return to their offices and schools. Accompanying this vast population shift is la rentrée politique, when the nation’s politicians return to partisan sniping and intraparty squabbles,…
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She’s 16. She’s Jewish. She’s Gotham’s newest superhero.
Willow Zimmerman is a 16-year-old activist. When she isn’t in school or holding up a picket sign, she can be found batch-baking rugelach or splitting a Reuben with a stray Great Dane she named Lebowitz (after Fran). But Willow has a secret set of extracurriculars. She helps run an illegal poker game for one of…
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An All-American journey through Blackness, whiteness, Christianity, Judaism, slavery and freedom
Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family By Laura Arnold Leibman Oxford University Press, 320 pages, $27.95 Race has always been an important category in American life. But its contours have never been fixed. Laws denoting who should be classified as white — or Black — have varied from state…
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Why a master of languages decided to reveal his true identity
“A Complicated Jew,” the Israeli translator and literary critic Hillel Halkin’s new essay collection, includes his thoughts on over half a century of Hebrew and Yiddish literary experience. Among Halkin’s acclaimed translations are works by Sholem Aleichem, Yosef Haim Brenner, S. Y. Agnon, Shulamith Hareven, A. B. Yehoshua, and Meir Shalev. He has also written…
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Books An oral history of the most epic Jewish summer camp prank ever
The summer before 10th grade, some friends of mine pulled off what I have long thought had to be the most outrageous prank of all time: spoiling the biggest twist in the Harry Potter series for an entire sleepaway camp. It happened at Camp Ramah in Ojai, Calif., on July 18, 2005, two days after…
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The secret Jewish history of Frankenstein
Author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on this day, Aug. 30, in 1797 in London. Shelley is best known as the author of the Gothic novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” and as the wife of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley was something of a radical in her time: a believer in…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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