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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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One year under lockdown — celebrating the anniversary from hell
March 11 isn’t a date to be commemorated with champagne or flowers. Nobody will celebrate the day in 2020 when the virus came to America. The traditional gift for a first anniversary is paper. This year’s favorites will likely be the stimulus check or a COVID Vaccination Record Card. Like so many Americans, I’ve been…
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Returning to Poland, chasing ghosts and a lost painting
“Still Life in Lodz,” a new documentary by Polish-Jewish director Slawomir Grunberg, centers on a Jewish woman’s return to her childhood home in Lodz, Poland, She, Lilka Elbaum, and her family were forced to flee no, not during the Holocaust, but in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War and a spike in Polish…
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Why is this Haggadah different from all others? Hitler.
This particular Haggadah, different from all others, was bound to raise eyebrows — if not create a furor. We don’t know much about its origins, but here’s what we do: It was written by a Jew in Rabat, Morocco, sometime after the start of Operation Torch, the 1942 Allied invasion that spelled victory against the…
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We need to talk about ‘Kike’ — how did the slur originate anyway?
What are the origins of the antisemitic slur "Kike" ?
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Between a shtetl-born painter and a Dutch expressionist, remarkable parallels
With his canvases depicting remote villages, blood-soaked carcasses and portraits of ordinary people, Chaïm Soutine was Willem de Kooning’s favorite–hands down. “I’ve always been crazy about Soutine — all of his paintings,” the Dutch-born artist once said. Now visitors to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia can see how the shtetl-born Jewish artist inspired de Kooning…
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Your comprehensive guide to choosing a new haggadah this year
Well, here we are again, still in Egypt. Not really — vaccinations are proceeding apace, and there are good reasons to be hopeful that next year’s Seder will be, if not in Jerusalem, then at least back at Bubbe’s place. We may not be across the Red Sea yet, but we have smeared plenty of…
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The Passover Parade: A look back at a century of unleavened fashion
The nerd-of-a-rabbi in me has found a pandemic pastime that beats doom scrolling: poring through digitized old Jewish periodicals. Among my discoveries: Passover has a fashionable history. For about a century starting in the 1850s, dressing up for the spring holiday was de rigueur for American Jews. “Buy your Pesadik clothing at Bailey’s,” urged a…
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WATCH NOW: May 12: “Animal, Vegetable, Junk”: A Conversation on Food, Climate Change and Spirituality with Mark Bittman
Watch the recording here. Join best-selling food writer Mark Bittman, Dayenu’s Rabbi Jennie Rosenn and National Editor Rob Eshman as they explore connections between food, climate change, food justice and spirituality. Mark Bittman is the author of 30 books, including his newest book “Animal, Vegetable, Junk” and the How to Cook Everything series. He was…
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Books Farewell to Norton Juster, who guided generations of readers through ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’
Milo, the protagonist of “The Phantom Tollbooth,” may be just ten years old. But readers may recall he experiences a very grown-up brand of ennui. “Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he’d bothered,” we learn of Milo in the first pages of the children’s…
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Denied tenure, Cornel West is leaving Harvard. Is it because of his support for Palestine?
Editor’s note: This story has been updated. It was originally published on February 22, 2021. Dr. Cornel West is an intellectual giant, one of a select group of academics who have recognition outside their field; he has published a wide range of books and has frequently appeared as a talking head on TV, and he…
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Why Leonard Cohen’s final album features the cantor from his home synagogue
In January 2018, after the late Leonard Cohen received his last, but not final, Grammy nomination, a representative from his hometown attended the ceremony: The cantor from the synagogue he grew up in. He wasn’t just there as an observer — he was a contributor. “My greatest sources of pride is that the choir and…
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