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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What this week’s Torah portion says about Marjorie Taylor Greene
Members of Congress who took the unprecedented step this week of removing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees in the House of Representatives also took a page from the Bible — which specifically counsels distancing oneself from lies. “From a lying word stay far away, and the guiltless and innocent do not kill, for I…
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Read Trump’s letter of resignation from the Manischewitz Frequent Buyers Circle
On Friday, former President Donald Trump, fresh from his preemptive resignation from SAG-AFTRA, did an end run on a campaign to oust him from the Manischewitz Frequent Buyers Circle by sending a letter of withdrawal — a bold move, given that his punch card was one purchase away from a free box of matzo. The…
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Is Serbia using a Holocaust film as nationalist propaganda?
'Dara of Jasenovac' is the first feature-length narrative about the death camp - but is it trying to score political points?
The Latest
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The trippy, far-out artist who refused to support the Nazis
In Robin Lutz’s intriguing (yet in the end incomplete) documentary, “M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity,” the iconic Dutch graphic artist (1898-1972), emerges as a complex and entertaining amalgam. He is an intellectual, a curmudgeon, and a tormented artist twisted this way and that over what he perceives to be his own inadequacies. Lutz evokes Escher’s…
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King Solomon wore a unique purple; now we know what that looked like
“Royal purple” is a phrase for a reason — the color was hard to produce in an era when most dyes came from vegetables. The shade, referred to as argaman or tekhelet in Hebrew, is a particularly vibrant hue mentioned only a few times in the Bible, when describing drapings for kings, a carriage for…
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An ode to Ellis Island, whose dingy reality contradicted its majestic dreams
Reading Georges Perec’s prose poem“Ellis Island” (reissued this month in a slim, Statue-of-Liberty green edition courtesy of New Directions), I felt inspired to coin a word. A wee bit precious of me, I’ll admit — but then, as I may have mentioned already, I was reading a book by Georges Perec. This is the writer…
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This 25-year-old Ashkenazi-British-Sudanese comedian is blowing up on TikTok
Lukas Arnold talks about his life all the time; it’s central to the comedy that has earned him 1.1 million followers on TikTok. And yet, the more he talks about himself, the more of an enigma he becomes. The 25-year-old comedian and voice actor’s dad is Ashkenazi, with ancestry in Poland. His mom is half…
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WATCH NOW: March 10: How to Die Young at a Very Old Age
Watch here. Why do some people age slowly and live healthier lives? What are the secrets to their longevity? Join a fascinating discussion with the team who are identifying the longevity gene in Ashkenazi Jews as they address questions on aging and what it means to be healthy and live long. Rob Eshman, National Editor…
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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…
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Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
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