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 Jerusalem, where lives intersect thrillingly — and sometimes violently
City of a Thousand Gates By Rebecca Sacks Harper, 384 pages, $27.99 As her epigraph suggests, Rebecca Sacks’ lovely debut novel, “City of a Thousand Gates,” concerns the impact of “the high drama of history” on individual lives. The phrase is drawn from Robert Musil’s philosophical novel, “The Man Without Qualities.” Here the lives are…
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Once upon a time, Jewish pirates ruled the seas
Sea shanties have taken the internet by storm. They’re catchy, they’re historical, and they may even have been sung on ships named “The Queen Esther” and “The Shield of Abraham.” That is to say, they may have been sung by Jewish pirates. Jews settled throughout the Caribbean from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century….
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Can an American Jew capture life in the West Bank? Debut novelist Rebecca Sacks is still figuring it out
The author Rebecca Sacks is very interested in Janus words. Named for the two-faced Roman god, Janus words contain two opposite meanings: One can use the word “cleave,” for example, to signify cutting something apart or binding two things together. Hebrew is rife with Janus words, Sacks told me over Zoom, rattling off examples with…
The Latest
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A new musical finds life in a Soviet Jewish homeland
Giles Howe has a story to tell about two Jewish homelands. The first is Israel, which he first encountered, like many Millennial Jews, on a Taglit Birthright trip. On his return — realizing he “knew very little about a lot” — he decided to explore his heritage to find where he belonged. He soon discovered…
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How will history judge Trump and his enablers? You’re asking the wrong question.
From the day Donald Trump was ushered into the White House to the day he was ushered out, commentators have found comfort in the phrase “history will judge.” If they mean that historians will not look kindly on Donald Trump and his enablers, they are probably right. But right or wrong, their “judgment” will probably…
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WATCH NOW: February 23: Meet the Forward 50
Watch here. Every year we publish the Forward 50, a list of remarkable people who have had a particular impact on our communities. This year, we’re asking them to join our Editor-in-Chief, Jodi Rudoren, for a weekly series of Zoominars about … whatever is on their minds. The list is a mix of activists and…
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Did the Bernie meme become sexist?
You know the image: the mittens, the huddled posture, the flyaway white hair, the manila envelope. At this point, the iconic picture of Bernie Sanders at Joe Biden’s inauguration has been burned into your brain with the force of a thousand memes. Collectively delighted, the internet edited him into photos, curated outfits based on his…
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Books You’ve probably never heard about the world’s first female rabbi. Sigal Samuel wants to change that
If you think female rabbis are a modern phenomenon, Sigal Samuel is here to change your mind — just like she changed hers. Samuel grew up in an Orthodox community where the idea of female clergy was considered deeply untraditional. So when, deep in an “internet rabbit hole,” she stumbled on the story of the…
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Cicely Tyson, longtime ally of Jews, occasional speaker of Yiddish
The actress Cicely Tyson, who died on Jan. 28 at age 96, was justly celebrated for her roles honoring African-American experiences in “Sounder” (1972), “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (1974), and “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” (1994), among others. But less has been said about her early work with stellar Jewish performers, and…
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A hospital emergency in the time of COVID
My urologist and I have an arrangement. If symptoms of urinary infection arise I am to go to his office immediately, so that he can determine the cause, and prescribe an appropriate anti-bioic so as to nip the infection in its early stages, before any real harm is done. I dislike going to the urologist…
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To understand the GameStop story, watch ‘The Big Short’
So you’re trying to understand the GameStop story, in which a subreddit banded together and managed to bankrupt a hedge fund, causing utter chaos on Wall Street all week. If you’re not involved in finance, it can be pretty confusing, full of jargon like pulling a “short squeeze” and requiring a decent grasp of how…
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