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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Once upon a time, Hollywood told the story of a forgotten Jewish patriot
Not since “The Jazz Singer” had a studio so elaborately staged a scene in a fully decked-out Jewish synagogue.
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Does America still sound ‘beautiful?’ Reinventing a patriotic anthem in seemingly non-patriotic times
Amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties were hardly top of mind in the late winter and spring of 2020. These were not halcyon days for America. A novel coronavirus outbreak turned global pandemic had knocked the breath out of us. One epidemic exposed and overlapped with another, laying bare the xenophobia, inequities, and…
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Iliza Shlesinger’s new Netflix feature should have stuck to standup
My dating history has been chaotic; rarely have I dated someone who “made sense” for me. My partners have included a literal shepherd who never finished high school and barely spoke English (but played flute on the beach like an honest-to-god satyr) and a polyamorous medical student who still routinely invites me on international adventures…
The Latest
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Film & TV Harvey Keitel deserves better than ‘Lansky’
After ordering tongue sandwiches and “an assortment of pickles” at a Miami deli, the terminally ill Meyer Lansky asks his handpicked biographer why he wants to write his story. “I don’t think it’s about one man,” says David Stone, the author of a well-received book on John F. Kennedy and a newly single father of…
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When the beginning meets the end: a year in reflection from a resident of the Chelsea Hotel
When I look back at the past year, my life seems to resemble a Rorschach test. Like the events of the past months were a blob of ink violently slapped into the center of a sheet of paper, folded in half and then pulled apart. The beginning mirrors the ending. It all started when I…
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Jesus may have eaten dates, but Jews grew them
Did Jesus love dates? We may never know, but a BBC documentary short asks the question, spurred by the fruit of the Methuselah date tree, which was germinated from an ancient seed found dried in the food storage at Masada. Judean dates were apparently a renowned delicacy in the time of Jesus, and perhaps he…
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The singularly Jewish tragedy of Maria Callas
For decades, devotees have adulated the soprano Maria Callas. who was regularly compared to the 19th century Italian Jewish diva Giuditta Pasta, in terms of the works she performed and her stage impact. The American Jewish writer Wayne Koestenbaum produced a paean of praise, lauding Callas for valuing “expressivity over loveliness.” Worshipers who knew Callas…
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For Mel Brooks’ 95th birthday, 4 ways he changed the world
From one Brooks, how many rivers flow? There’s a bit of trivia about the filmmaker, who turns 95 on Monday, that I often turn over in my head. On an episode of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” Carl Reiner said that the two funniest people he knew were Brooks and a 16-year-old kid named Albert Einstein….
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Books ACT UP changed AIDS activism. Sarah Schulman wants us to learn its lessons
Sarah Schulman had already been covering AIDS as a journalist for five years when she attended a 1987 demonstration organized by the newly-formed AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP. ACT UP members picketed outside New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for 72 hours in protest of the sluggish pace…
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Books Looking for Hope: A writer finds inspiration in Jewish-Palestinian friendship, especially now
Haviva Ner-David was just starting to promote her debut novel, about the intersecting lives of two Israeli women — one Jewish, one Palestinian — when last month’s military escalation with Gaza erupted, accompanied by the worst internecine fighting between Jewish and Arab citizens in recent memory. Ner David, a rabbi, writer, and mother of seven,…
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Arturo Schwarz — lover of art, paragon of altruism
Visitors to the Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum, Negev Museum of Art in Be’er Sheva, and National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome will recognize the name of Arturo Schwarz, who died June 23 at age 97. Schwarz was the munificent donor of a splendid collection of Dada and surrealist art to these institutions and…
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