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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Computers can write Torah now — should we be excited or terrified?
The premise was mine. I typed: Once the CEO of Apple approached the Kotzker Rebbe and asked him why he should continue believing in God. The Kotzker answered: Yes, I wondered. What did he answer? I pressed Enter. On the screen, it appeared: ”I am a lamp. I give light to others. But I do…
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Meet the sociologist who left his Chabad community and wrote a pathbreaking study of ex-Hasidim
Read this article in Yiddish When Schneur Zalman Newfield studied at Chabad yeshivas, everyone thought he was a pious young man who had little knowledge of the outside world. They couldn’t have imagined that Newfield had secretly assembled a stash of contraband books – modern Yiddish literature, science and history texts and even Russian novels…
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Film & TV An Oscar winner gives new life to a classic story of exile
When Caroline Link reread “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit,” decades after she first read it for school, she underlined a passage where Swiss boys throw gravel at the young Jewish protagonist. She couldn’t wait to direct that scene. It’s a curious, if not quite startling moment in the chapter book, a 1971 semi-autobiographical novel of…
The Latest
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Are Instagram infographics driving the narrative around the Israeli-Palestinian crisis?
Hashtag activism isn’t known for making a long-lasting impact, but it’s certainly a way to spread news and hot takes far and wide — the hotter the take, the more viral the post. While social media’s full impact on the evolving conflict in Gaza and Jerusalem is still emerging, blaring headlines and infographics have already…
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A century after Woolf asked for a room of her own, Deborah Levy wants the whole house
“Real Estate,” Deborah Levy informs us in her memoir by that name, is not a gender-neutral term. The word “real” derives from the word Latin “rex,” or “king;” in Spanish, “real” still carries that meaning, because monarchs once owned all the land in their domains. Today, the phrase denotes residential property, yet its etymology nods…
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Norman Lloyd, who acted for Hitchcock, Welles, Chaplin & ‘St. Elsewhere’ dies at 106
The American Jewish actor, director and producer Norman Nathan Lloyd, who died May 10 at age 106, proved over a long career how in show business, it’s who you know as well as what you know that counts. In his 1990 memoir “Stages,” Lloyd explained how he was born in Jersey City to Conservative Jewish…
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A Holocaust story of incredible luck, breathtaking bravery and incalculable loss
My Name is Selma: The Remarkable Memoir of a Jewish Resistance Fighter and Ravensbrück Survivor By Selma van de Perre; translated by Alice Tetley-Paul and Anna Asbury Scribner, 224 pages, $27 And still the stories keep coming. At 98, Selma van de Perre has published her first book, a memoir about her activities in the…
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Babi Yar is a site of Jewish death. With a new synagogue, this architect vows to ‘bring back Jewish life’
On the haunted ground of Babi Yar, the walls of a synagogue are opening and closing like the pages of a pop-up book. Over the course of two nights in 1941, SS officers and their local Ukrainian allies murdered almost 34,000 Jews at this ancient ravine, perpetrating one of the largest and most infamous massacres…
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Will Seth Rogen’s very Jewish book upset Jews?
It’s been nine months since Seth Rogen agitated the Jewish community by expressing a sentiment increasingly common among his generation. You’d be forgiven for forgetting all about it. In August, the actor-writer appeared on Marc Maron’s podcast and said he was “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel” throughout his Jewish education. The backlash…
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God Bless Irving Berlin!
Editor’s Note; This article was originally published in the Forward on September 20, 2012. To some lovers of classical American song, it may seem paradoxical that the Tin Pan Alley genius who created such goyish holiday classics as “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” was born Israel Isidore Beilin in Belarus, Russia, the son of a…
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Antisemitism may be the least of Van Morrison’s problems on his wretched new album
There is not one single moment of wit, humor or self-reflection on Van Morrison’s execrable new album, “Latest Recording Project Volume 1” (is that “Volume 1” a promise or a threat?). Morrison gives full voice to his inner Karen throughout the album, kvetching about everything from COVID lockdowns, bad reviews, Facebook, and, insidiously, Jews who…
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