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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Wikipedia fixed its swastika problem fast. Why can’t anyone else?
Hate speech is notoriously hard to police online, and nearly every major social media platform has been criticized in the recent past for allowing disinformation and hate to proliferate on their platforms. Wikipedia, meanwhile, got a hacker’s swastikas off of its site in under five minutes. On Monday morning, a Wikipedia template was vandalized, impacting…
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A Jewish guide to watching HBO’s harrowing ‘Woodstock 99’
You learn a lot about what went horribly wrong with the Woodstock 1999 festival from the new HBO documentary, “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage.” You learn about the inadequate precautions taken to secure the festival grounds at a decommissioned air force base in upstate New York; the blazing, 100-degree heat with sun baking asphalt…
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A museum devoted to the Jewish Catskills? In Ulster County, one man’s ready to break ground
Half a century after their heyday, the Catskills are having a moment. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” recently devoted the bulk of a season to the Jewish Alps’ tummling past. The passing of comedian Jackie Mason recalled a bygone era, when families fled urban sprawls to get some mountain air and kibbitz with their coreligionists in…
The Latest
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How Jewish alliances fueled the rise of Vernon Jordan
Vernon Jordan, who died in March of this year, would have turned 86 today, Aug. 15, which provides a good occasion to examine how a Black power broker and civil rights advocate used Jewish alliances to further his goals. More than a mere attorney, Jordan was a fixer and kingmaker. He owed his entry into…
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Books How classic Yiddish tales are being brought back to life — and in English too!
David Forman’s newest book is an old one. Rich with tales of giants, the Tudor court and highwaymen besieging a humble Jewish village, “The Clever Little Tailor” is the first English translation and bilingual edition of Yiddish writer Solomon Simon’s 1933 collection of stories about Shnayderl the tailor. The book is noteworthy for having the…
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The porky Jewish hockey hero you’ve never heard of
When the 2021-22 National Hockey League season opens this October, the Seattle Kraken will be the first professional Emerald City team since the Totems folded in 1975. But, Seattle has had a long affiliation with the game. The Seattle Metropolitans played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. At this time, the Stanley Cup was a…
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The secret Jewish history of Liza Minnelli
Like her mother before her, Liza Minnelli is not Jewish. But her life and career has found her inextricably linked with Jewish partners and collaborators. Take, for example, her award-winning 1972 TV concert film, “Liza with a Z,” which is being broadcast on PBS-TV for the first time beginning this weekend (check your local listings)….
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Film & TV Filmmakers constructed an acre-sized shtetl for a Ukrainian WWII film. Now they want to preserve it as a museum.
(JTA) — In the woods of northern Ukraine, construction workers have built an island in time: a shtetl. That’s the Yiddish word for the type of old-fashioned Jewish towns that existed throughout Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. This new shtetl, comprising 18 buildings on more than an acre of land near the lakeside town of…
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Can Kabbalah explain the most mystifying new movie on Amazon?
I was in sixth grade when I first heard about “the greatest anime of all time,” an epic of teen angst and robot-on-monster violence called “Neon Genesis Evangelion.” I can’t remember the name of the kid who told me about it — only that he was a grade older and I very much wanted his…
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When 250 Orthodox Jewish immigrants worked as extras for Cecil B. DeMille
Editor’s Note: On the occasion of Cecil B. DeMille’s 140th birthday, we’re revisiting this article from 2019. Among the thousands of extras Cecil B. DeMille hired for his original, silent version of “The Ten Commandments” were 250 Orthodox Jewish immigrants, newly arrived in Los Angeles from Eastern Europe The director hoped that they would lend…
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Oops! A Fox anchor said Karl Marx wrote ‘Mein Kampf’
There are moments in literary history that shape the world. Around 1445 B.C.E. unnamed sources composed the first books of the Bible. In 1450 Johannes Gutenberg perfected his printing press. Thomas Paine publishes “Common Sense” in 1776. And in 1848, Karl Marx wrote “Mein Kampf” — at least that’s what one Fox anchor said. On…
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