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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German hotel requires rock star to hide Star of David
Gil Ofarim has been a professional musician since 1997, when his song “Round ‘n’ Round (It Goes)” made the Top 40 charts in his native Germany. While his teen heartthrob days may have waned, he’s still well-known, particularly in Germany. Yet despite his fame, a concierge told the 39-year-old rocker Tuesday that he could not…
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Jewish character actor Nehemia Persoff looks back at ups and downs of his first 102 years
(JTA) — When actor, painter and writer Nehemia Persoff, at times dubbed “the last survivor of Hollywood’s golden age,” was a three-year old growing up in Jerusalem, he fell in love with his kindergarten teacher. Desperate to attract her attention, little Nehemia got on his trike and rode it in smaller and smaller circles until…
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Was her parents’ tempestuous marriage part of an elaborate cover story? She may never know for sure.
Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets By Judy Bolton-Fasman Mandel Vilar Press, 248 pages, $24.95 The most frustrating moment in Judy Bolton-Fasman’s beautifully-written family memoir, “Asylum,” comes in the prologue, titled “Burn This.” Her father has mailed her an envelope filled with what she imagines to be his long-held secrets. Before she opens it, though,…
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As mathematic geniuses go, this Jewish enigma was no Stephen Hawking
In the pantheon of films about real-life mathematicians — think Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game,” Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” or even John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” — Stan Ulam, the title character in “The Adventures of a Mathematician,” falls a tad short. Perhaps comparisons are unfair. After all, Turing (Benedict…
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In honoring those who wage ‘humane’ war, has the Nobel Peace Prize become a force of villainy?
Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War By Samuel Moyn Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 416 pages, $25.49 Slavery is evil. It is also a part of human nature. Human beings are aggressive, violent creatures, which is why you find slavery in every society in human history. Ergo, attempts to get rid of…
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The 12 greatest Jewish feats in baseball playoff history
Ah, October — when Jewish holidays, fall colors, Halloween and the baseball postseason combine to make for a particularly festive time of the year. Of course, when we think of Jewish baseball heroics in October, we immediately (and understandably) think of Sandy Koufax. But while the “Left Arm of God” certainly ranks high on any…
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A tale told by a Coen brother — full of sound and fury, signifying what all the other Coen Brothers movies have signified
Like a Technicolor noir or a Seth Rogen drama, a Coen brothers movie based on someone else’s writing is a rare and risky proposition. By my count, only one fully successful example exists: “No Country for Old Men,” adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel. Then there are the four others that nobody seems too eager to…
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Dr. Seuss + Ray Bradbury + Jewish kung-fu + Nazi satire = the mixed-up files of Israeli sci-fi writer Lavie Tidhar
Perhaps you know his novel where Hitler works as a private detective in London (“A Man Lies Dreaming”). Or maybe the one in which the Tel Aviv bus station is now the world’s premier spaceport (“Central Station”). Or you might have heard the one about how the Jewish state was actually established in East Africa…
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No, Senator Blumenthal, the problem is much bigger than finstas
“Will you commit to ending finsta?” Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Facebook’s Head of Global Safety, Antigone Davis, at Thursday’s hearing on the risks Instagram poses to teenagers. Finsta, short for “fake Instagram” is slang for a category of private Instagram accounts users turn to for a variety of purposes — evading parental oversight, posting stupid…
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The AIDS crisis strained his relationship with Judaism. Now, it’s integral to his art — and activism.
In 1993, artist and activist Gregg Bordowitz premiered his film “Fast Trip, Long Drop,” a not-quite documentary that made for a biting critique of media coverage of the AIDS crisis. The film, in which Bordowitz plays a defiant talk show guest named Alter Allesman — Yiddish for “old everyman” — was shown widely at LGBTQ…
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For the saga of Britney Spears, a dramatic Biblical precedent (and not necessarily in a good way)
Britney Spears’s father controlled her life for over a decade under a restrictive conservatorship that allowed him to, among many things, dictate her right to get married and have children and gave him control over the millions of dollars she made as a pop star. On Wednesday, shortly after the pop star was granted the…
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