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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In Surfside, a Jewish tragedy receives a Jewish response
The volunteers trudged to the mansion’s front door, their heads covered, most of them wearing the same navy T-shirts they had been wearing all week, their uniform. It was about four hours shy of eight full days since the men of Hatzalah of South Florida responded to a call about a building in Surfside that…
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Users reported an Instagram filter for featuring a swastika. It’s still up.
If you’ve ever wondered how you might look fully covered in tattoos, there are Instagram filters that can help you imagine it by projecting images onto your arms and chest. Unfortunately, you don’t get to choose the tats— and one popular filter, called “Old School,” places a Native American feather headdress adorned with a swastika…
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Is Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Hollywood’ novel an apologia for Roman Polanski?
Quentin Tarantino changed film history with “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” No, the film wasn’t a breakthrough work of cinema, rather, it literally rewrote the Tinseltown timeline by imagining an alternate ending to an epoch-defining tragedy. Two years later, Tarantino’s novelization of the 2019 movie — out now, complete with mass market-paperback packaging and…
The Latest
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These Facebook groups help writers find jobs — and Jews who discuss Israel are being kicked out
Binder groups — a secretive network of Facebook communities to help writers who aren’t cisgender men find writing jobs — are supposed to be safe spaces. But recently, Jews have been feeling as though they’ve become just as unwelcome as men. In the last few weeks, one group with approximately 12,300 members, Binders Full of…
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Sacrifice through Heresy
Read this article in Yiddish Qorbanot: Offerings Poems by Alisha Kaplan SUNY Press, 2021 Many people believe that sacrificing for a greater good is a virtue. In the Jewish tradition, even martyrdom in the right context is called “the sanctification of God’s holy name.” But what should you do when holiness is weakened — by…
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‘Pride is also a Yizkor’: Remembering LGBTQ Jews we’ve lost
“Pride is also a Yizkor.” Those were the words of the Forward’s archivist, Chana Pollack, early in Pride month, as she and I discussed her planned dive into the Forward’s archives in search of its queer history. Her point: Generations of LGBTQ Jews who have faced exclusion from their families and communities have wondered who…
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Top 50 cover versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ ranked!
The definitive top 50 rankings of Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah' cover versions
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Once upon a time, Hollywood told the story of a forgotten Jewish patriot
Not since “The Jazz Singer” had a studio so elaborately staged a scene in a fully decked-out Jewish synagogue.
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Does America still sound ‘beautiful?’ Reinventing a patriotic anthem in seemingly non-patriotic times
Amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties were hardly top of mind in the late winter and spring of 2020. These were not halcyon days for America. A novel coronavirus outbreak turned global pandemic had knocked the breath out of us. One epidemic exposed and overlapped with another, laying bare the xenophobia, inequities, and…
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Iliza Shlesinger’s new Netflix feature should have stuck to standup
My dating history has been chaotic; rarely have I dated someone who “made sense” for me. My partners have included a literal shepherd who never finished high school and barely spoke English (but played flute on the beach like an honest-to-god satyr) and a polyamorous medical student who still routinely invites me on international adventures…
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Film & TV Harvey Keitel deserves better than ‘Lansky’
After ordering tongue sandwiches and “an assortment of pickles” at a Miami deli, the terminally ill Meyer Lansky asks his handpicked biographer why he wants to write his story. “I don’t think it’s about one man,” says David Stone, the author of a well-received book on John F. Kennedy and a newly single father of…
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Sports This year’s biggest World Cup upset came from its most ‘Jew-ish’ team
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Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens
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News Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion Soccer helped my family survive the Nazis. Our community has lost sight of that story’s meaning
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Theater Eliya Smith says plot is what happens when you’re busy doing nothing
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Fast Forward Shots fired in Jewish neighborhood of Montreal
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Music Everyone was a fan of Clive Davis — even if they didn’t know it