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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When the beginning meets the end: a year in reflection from a resident of the Chelsea Hotel
When I look back at the past year, my life seems to resemble a Rorschach test. Like the events of the past months were a blob of ink violently slapped into the center of a sheet of paper, folded in half and then pulled apart. The beginning mirrors the ending. It all started when I…
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Jesus may have eaten dates, but Jews grew them
Did Jesus love dates? We may never know, but a BBC documentary short asks the question, spurred by the fruit of the Methuselah date tree, which was germinated from an ancient seed found dried in the food storage at Masada. Judean dates were apparently a renowned delicacy in the time of Jesus, and perhaps he…
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The singularly Jewish tragedy of Maria Callas
For decades, devotees have adulated the soprano Maria Callas. who was regularly compared to the 19th century Italian Jewish diva Giuditta Pasta, in terms of the works she performed and her stage impact. The American Jewish writer Wayne Koestenbaum produced a paean of praise, lauding Callas for valuing “expressivity over loveliness.” Worshipers who knew Callas…
The Latest
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For Mel Brooks’ 95th birthday, 4 ways he changed the world
From one Brooks, how many rivers flow? There’s a bit of trivia about the filmmaker, who turns 95 on Monday, that I often turn over in my head. On an episode of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” Carl Reiner said that the two funniest people he knew were Brooks and a 16-year-old kid named Albert Einstein….
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Books ACT UP changed AIDS activism. Sarah Schulman wants us to learn its lessons
Sarah Schulman had already been covering AIDS as a journalist for five years when she attended a 1987 demonstration organized by the newly-formed AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP. ACT UP members picketed outside New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for 72 hours in protest of the sluggish pace…
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Books Looking for Hope: A writer finds inspiration in Jewish-Palestinian friendship, especially now
Haviva Ner-David was just starting to promote her debut novel, about the intersecting lives of two Israeli women — one Jewish, one Palestinian — when last month’s military escalation with Gaza erupted, accompanied by the worst internecine fighting between Jewish and Arab citizens in recent memory. Ner David, a rabbi, writer, and mother of seven,…
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Arturo Schwarz — lover of art, paragon of altruism
Visitors to the Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum, Negev Museum of Art in Be’er Sheva, and National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome will recognize the name of Arturo Schwarz, who died June 23 at age 97. Schwarz was the munificent donor of a splendid collection of Dada and surrealist art to these institutions and…
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Fiction | The Holy Messiah
Can you believe it, there are Jews here living among us on this sliver of desert hugged on the one side by the Mediterranean and on the other by enemies too numerous to count, who do not recognize the State of Israel, or plain old “Israel,” or even “ha-aretz,” like the name of the newspaper,…
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Books She followed rookie doctors through the very worst of COVID
(JTA) — (New York Jewish Week via JTA) — For most New Yorkers, the early days of COVID-19 were synonymous with eerily empty streets, the constant wail of sirens, and the clapping and cheering for health care workers. But what was it really like for the doctors and other health care professionals who found themselves…
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Netflix’s ‘sexy’ new animal-head dating show has biblical overtones — sort of
What if you were dating a rather bulbous dolphin? It’s a question no one had ever asked themselves before the arrival of Netflix’s new dating show, “Sexy Beasts.” Contestants are swathed in an obscene amount of FX makeup and prosthetic fins and transformed into various creatures, both real and fantastical, to see if they can…
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Film & TV How Jewish and Irish humor intermarried on ‘Conan’
Nearly 28 years ago Conan O’Brien filmed himself walking to his first day of work. Along the way, his doorman, hopscotching children and a horse and buggy driver, reminded him he was under “a lot of pressure” and threatened that “he better be good.” O’Brien, an accomplished writer for “SNL” and the “The Simpsons,” but…
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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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 Montreal shooting leaves Jewish resident and police officer dead, suspect neutralized
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Music Everyone was a fan of Clive Davis — even if they didn’t know it