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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Is the organ donation system run by a ‘God Committee’? This writer-director wants us to ask.
When writer-director Austin Stark, 42, heard about a wealthy man in desperate need of a liver transplant bribing a hospital for an organ, he was shocked and appalled — and couldn’t stop thinking about it. “And then I read a powerful play by Mark St. Germain, which explores a very similar situation, and in doing…
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For Laurel and Hardy, a surprisingly deep Jewish history
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first appearance in the same film, “The Lucky Dog” (1921) by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the comedy duo whose work featured a surprising amount of Yiddishkeit. At the start of the 1930 film “Blotto,” during a moment of domestic discord, Laurel puzzles over a Yiddish newspaper,…
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Meet the husband and wife behind Williamsburg’s first Hasidic art gallery
Just off Flushing Avenue, a bustling thoroughfare in Hasidic Williamsburg, there’s a basement full of art. Chiaroscuro portraits of eminent rabbis. Scenes of Jerusalem’s Western Wall. Modernist sculptures of men kissing their tefillin, tender floral still lifes, a collection of old violins splatter-painted in exuberant colors. Housed in a lower-level ballroom in the Condor Hotel,…
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WATCH NOW: November 11: Last Call for He’Brew Beer
Watch here. After 25 years, He’Brew beer is closing the tap Join Jeremy Cowan, the founder of the world’s only Jewish beer, and Forward National Editor Rob Eshman as we raise a glass to Shmaltz Brewing and talk about the life and legacy of “The Chosen Ale.” What did it take to make a great,…
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WATCH NOW: November 10: Ballad for Two Friends: How Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan built a tower of song
Watch now. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen were huge fans of each other — and the influence cut both ways. One a Jew from Montreal, the other from Minnesota, the two men personified an offbeat style of cool, and, with unmistakable voices, sang some of the 20th century’s greatest poetry. In this conversation we shine…
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August 3: Live From Jerusalem: Journalists in the Middle East Crosshairs
This event will take place on Tuesday, August 3 at 11:30 a.m. ET / 8:30 a.m. PT Register here. Jerusalem is not a beat for the journalistic faint of heart. Depending on the day or the story, the people who cover the region are lambasted for being too pro-Israel, too pro-Arab, ignorant of history, ill-informed,…
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Chatting with Charlotte Gainsbourg about her mother, Jane Birkin, in Cannes
“When you were about 14 years old, I was dying to see you naked,” Jane Birkin tells her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg towards the beginning of “Jane par Charlotte,” a documentary about the duo that had its world premiere earlier this week at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s one of the most provocative moments in the…
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Tavi Gevinson was the first influencer. On ‘Gossip Girl,’ she’s facing the consequences.
“Gossip Girl” is supposed to be a show about wealthy, terrible teens cheating on each other and being awful to service workers. But in the new version of “Gossip Girl,” the teachers are the center of attention. They run the Gossip Girl Instagram account, they blackmail their students and they’re even — problematically — at…
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Couldn’t make Cannes? The (James) Caan Film Festival awaits.
While the film industry is busy taking in the sun — and, one imagines, some movies — in the French coastal resort town of Cannes, Eric Hynes is once again thinking about Caan — James Caan. “I think he’s underrated as a sort of reader of lines,” said Hynes, curator of film at Astoria’s Museum…
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WATCH NOW: November 3: The most copied Jewish building in the world
Watch now. Around the world, there are 35 replicas of 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of Lubavitch-Chabad in Brooklyn. Meet the photographers who have been documenting every one of these replicas, from Brazil to Milan to New Jersey, the historian who uncovered the building’s surprisingly secular history, and the architect who designed one of…
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The new ‘Gossip Girl’ is supposed to be woke — so why won’t it discuss racism?
“You know you missed me — XOXO.” So read a sign trailing behind an airplane flying over Rockaway Beach last weekend. It was mysterious, but almost any millennial woman would know instantly what it was about. “Gossip Girl,” the hit 2007 show about wealthy New York City teens cheating on each other and drinking martinis,…
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