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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Up for sale: Letters from Lenny Bruce and Charles Manson, a Disneyland orgy and the story of a generation
The political upheaval of the 1960s is certainly having a moment in Hollywood. Among the films up for the best picture Oscar are “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” And, of course, Best Supporting Actor nominations went to Daniel Kaluuya for his portrayal of the murdered Black Panther Fred…
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A guide to the Forverts archival coverage of the Triangle Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was one of the worst industrial tragedies in America. On the eve of its 110th anniversary, read reporting published in the Yiddish-language Forverts in the aftermath of the deadly fire. Articles were translated by Chana Pollack, Ezra Glinter and Myra Mniewski. March 26, 1911 Our Ghastly Devastation One day after…
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Your 2021 guide to virtual Passover seders
While the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and loosened restrictions on gatherings will allow some families, friends, and congregations to be together this Passover, the majority of us are preparing for yet another pandemic Passover. Last year, Jewish communities around the country came together virtually to celebrate the holiday, the first of what would become a full…
The Latest
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On Houdini’s 147th birthday, the incredible stories you never heard
Writer’s Note: Today would have been Harry Houdini’s 147th birthday. At least we think so — he always said he was born April 6, possibly out of ignorance of the true date. It’s one more bit of dissembling from a man notorious for invented biography. In honor of the occasion, we are reprinting this piece…
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George Segal brought Jewishness to the screen — even when he was playing non-Jews
George Segal, who died on Mar. 23 at age 87, had a singular screen impact as an explicitly and implicitly Jewish actor starting in the 1960s. Remembered best by younger audiences for delivering sitcom lines at rapid fire tempo in the series “Just Shoot Me!” (1997–2003) and “The Goldbergs” (2013–2021), Segal was an infinitely more…
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Almost 900 pages about Philip Roth — and yet the crucial part goes missing
Philip Roth, The Biography By Blake Bailey Norton, 896 pages $40 Philip Roth. Love him or hate him. Me? I loved him. As is the case for many Jewish American novelists, his work informed mine in countless ways. Also, I worked in the twilight of the New York publishing era Roth came up in. Though…
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If you’re looking for a Passover anthem, this is…not it
If you haven’t heard of Trisha Paytas, I recommend you stop reading here and continue on in blissful ignorance. If you follow the ever-controversial Youtube-TikTok-social media figure, you will be unsurprised by her new music video release. Titled “I Love You Moses,” it is part Passover banger and part love song to her Israeli fiancé,…
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As in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ small disasters foretell the destruction of a world
The Slaughterman’s Daughter By Yaniv Iczkovits; translated from the Hebrew by Orr Scharf Schocken Books, 515 pages, $28.99 As history, family lore, and Yiddish fiction all attest, the 19th-century Russian Empire held numerous dangers for Jews in the Pale of Settlement: grinding poverty, pogroms, conscription into the Czar’s army. Sholem Aleichem’s folkloric stories mined this…
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‘Why We Need You, Molly Picon’ — a poem
WHY WE NEED YOU, MOLLY PICON Because you were born two years before the birth of the twentieth century and your mother sewed for the theater, because your father was too brilliant to work, blamed your mother for his two girls, so he moved out, because you caught the eye of a drunk on a…
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How an Israeli video whiz created the typewriter supercut that’s helping you be (or feel) productive at home
Typewriters ooze productivity — which might be why we love using them to procrastinate. If you’ve been on the internet in the last month, you probably spent two minutes and three seconds watching this mesmerizing montage of cinematic typewriters. The supercut, which went viral on the inspiration-seeking corners of the internet, is set to Leroy…
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How the pandemic freed me from the neurosis-inducing rules of Passover
For my doctoral dissertation, I wrote on a much-misunderstood 18th century heretic named Jacob Frank. Yet I hadn’t really considered the relevance of Frank’s antinomianism – the belief that transgressing the law is a religious or ethical duty – to my own life. Until this year. Though Frank is often associated with transgressive sexuality and…
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