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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The Passover Parade: A look back at a century of unleavened fashion
The nerd-of-a-rabbi in me has found a pandemic pastime that beats doom scrolling: poring through digitized old Jewish periodicals. Among my discoveries: Passover has a fashionable history. For about a century starting in the 1850s, dressing up for the spring holiday was de rigueur for American Jews. “Buy your Pesadik clothing at Bailey’s,” urged a…
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WATCH NOW: May 12: “Animal, Vegetable, Junk”: A Conversation on Food, Climate Change and Spirituality with Mark Bittman
Watch the recording here. Join best-selling food writer Mark Bittman, Dayenu’s Rabbi Jennie Rosenn and National Editor Rob Eshman as they explore connections between food, climate change, food justice and spirituality. Mark Bittman is the author of 30 books, including his newest book “Animal, Vegetable, Junk” and the How to Cook Everything series. He was…
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Books Farewell to Norton Juster, who guided generations of readers through ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’
Milo, the protagonist of “The Phantom Tollbooth,” may be just ten years old. But readers may recall he experiences a very grown-up brand of ennui. “Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he’d bothered,” we learn of Milo in the first pages of the children’s…
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Denied tenure, Cornel West is leaving Harvard. Is it because of his support for Palestine?
Editor’s note: This story has been updated. It was originally published on February 22, 2021. Dr. Cornel West is an intellectual giant, one of a select group of academics who have recognition outside their field; he has published a wide range of books and has frequently appeared as a talking head on TV, and he…
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Why Leonard Cohen’s final album features the cantor from his home synagogue
In January 2018, after the late Leonard Cohen received his last, but not final, Grammy nomination, a representative from his hometown attended the ceremony: The cantor from the synagogue he grew up in. He wasn’t just there as an observer — he was a contributor. “My greatest sources of pride is that the choir and…
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The dangerous hate movement we need to talk about
Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists; The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All By Laura Bates Sourcebooks ; $28.99 ; 352pp There’s an ideology that’s spreading via the internet, leading to terrorist attacks in America. It existed before the internet of course, but the past decade has seen…
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Happy birthday to Barbie, an intermittently Jewish icon
Rumors of Barbie’s death were greatly exaggerated. On March 8, 2014, the day before the doll’s 55th birthday, a [Daily Beast article](The Death of Barbie (thedailybeast.com) opined that the doll’s days were numbered due to declining sales. The Forward responded with mixed feelings for the Mattel toy, who, befitting her origins, meant a lot to…
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The 10 essential films of the Yiddish renaissance
In 1950, the great actor, producer and Yiddish theater impresario Maurice Schwartz closed down his Yiddish Art Theater in New York. Demand for Yiddish theater had waned. That same year, what were believed to be the last Yiddish language feature movies to be made were released. They were Josef Berne’s “Catskill Honeymoon” and Joseph Seiden’s…
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WATCH NOW: May 11: Yiddish Folk Song: The Next Generation
Watch the recording here. Boston breeds great Yiddish folk singers – after all, New England Conservatory is the only music school in the US where students can take a class on performing Yiddish folk music! Join a new generation of Boston-based Yiddish singers keeping the tradition alive and fresh – Adah Hetko, Kirsten Lamb, Eden…
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A tale of horrors joins a Yiddish film renaissance
It’s been a long time coming — a horror film set in a Hasidic section of Brooklyn, where much of the dialogue is in Yiddish. Films that deal with the supernatural are certainly no stranger to Jewish lore and culture. Since the advent of cinema, there have been several films made about dybbuks, demons and…
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The indescribable pleasures of grandfatherhood
Her features were feminine to a fault and of perfect symmetry. Short, dark brown hair, with kind of a Mohawk frill atop, delicate fingers, straight as an arrow, and the cutest curly tongue I had ever seen. What amazed me most was that she was in the room at all when I arrived and that…
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