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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The prickly reason Mel Gibson will never be canceled
The reason Mel Gibson still works in Hollywood has to do with some obscure — possibly Australian — practice called cactus-hugging. Earlier this week actor Josh Malina, writing for The Atlantic, wondered why Gibson, despite his many high-profile — and in the case of “Passion of the Christ,” highly lucrative — displays of antisemitism, may…
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Kwanzakkah celebrates power of dual identities, overcoming oppressions
For Carol Valoris, the holiday season used to evoke mixed feelings. As a white Jewish mother of two Black Jewish daughters, she described seeing her family zigzagging between Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. No matter which holiday the family was observing, she said, someone was always left out. “It always felt a little bittersweet,” said Valoris, 75,…
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Why did Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen make a Christmas show — and why is it so bad?
What if Santa was a Jewish woman? That’s a question no one ever asked until “Santa, Inc.,” a new stop-animation show on HBOMax starring Seth Rogen as Santa and Sarah Silverman as an elf named Candy Smalls. Of course, no one really needed to ask that question. And even “Santa Inc.” barely addresses it —…
The Latest
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Why I made a siddur for cigarettes and what it does (and doesn’t) mean
Before you is a cigarette box designed to look like a small prayer book. The idea for this object had been rattling around in my head since 2015. Realizing that I did not have the technical skills to make it myself, I contacted Rachel Jackson, a scribe and bookbinder, and during the summer of 2017…
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Peru’s most celebrated author was a great friend to the Jews — is he still?
The Peruvian Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, recently honored by election to the French Academy, has long expressed his creative debt to Jewish writers and thinkers. More recently, some readers have asked whether Varguitas (a nickname he adopted for his fiction, reused in a memoir by an ex-wife) is a friend to be cherished…
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A baseball star and all-around mensch finally makes it to the Hall of Fame
The news that Gil Hodges, former Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman and New York Mets manager, has been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, should make the Jews already present in that hallowed spot kvell. Including the late Marvin Miller, the longtime player’s union executive who was belatedly inducted into…
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That time Tom Waits taught Bob Dylan how to curse in Yiddish
Tom Waits, whose colorful career in music and entertainment began around 1970, turns 72 today Dec. 7. While he may not be as prolific as he once was as a recording artist, Waits continues to perform and record, and he still shows up in feature films like “Licorice Pizza,” the new Paul Thomas Anderson film…
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It won the Israeli Oscar. But one of its subjects calls it a ‘pseudo-documentary.’
The man who provided the source material for an Ophir-award winning documentary about Nazi architect Albert Speer is challenging the film’s accuracy, claiming the filmmakers put words in his — and Speer’s — mouth. Screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who tape-recorded over 40 hours of conversation with Speer while developing a film adaptation of Speer’s memoir “Inside…
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What a hare with amber eyes can tell us about an art collection lost to Nazi looting
The newest installation at the Jewish Museum tells the story of a vanished world. But a series of entirely contemporary photographs are among the most striking objects on display. Captured by the Dutch architectural photographer Iwan Baan, the photos show a series of opulent rooms filled with prosaic everyday objects. A hand sanitizer dispenser stands…
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Long after the Holocaust, the glittering spirit of a Jewish art world endures
There are many reasons to celebrate the 20th anniversary of New York’s Neue Galerie. To begin with, the elegant museum, focused exclusively on German and Austrian art, has reopened, after being closed for more than a year due to COVID. And it has done so with panache, with “Modern Worlds: Austrian and German Art, 1890-1940,”…
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Books Obsessed about positive coverage, Trump worked on Abraham Accords while in hospital with COVID, new book claims
Former President Donald Trump worked on expanding the Abraham Accords from his hospital bed where he was being treated for a life-threatening case of COVID-19, hoping the positive news coming out of the Middle East would distract the country’s attention away from his illness, his former chief of staff reveals in a new memoir. “Still…
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