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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Meet the real-life artist behind the paintings in ‘Shtisel’
Akiva Shtisel, the protagonist of the eponymous series, is a genius artist, and his gorgeous paintings lie at the heart of the show about Haredi life. In the most recent season, his paintings of his deceased wife hold much of the emotional weight of the show, symbolizing Akiva’s grief and his struggle to develop a…
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At the Jewish Museum, the midcentury feels very, very modern
I arrived at “Modern Look,” the Jewish Museum’s newest exhibit, ready for what it promised: a bird’s-eye view of midcentury magazine photography. But I was preoccupied, as I have been for weeks, with a very different media moment. The recent documentary “Framing Britney Spears,” which showed how exploitative coverage eroded the singer’s mental health, has…
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Documentarian Ric Burns on why there will never be another Oliver Sacks
Writer’s note: Ric Burns’ “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life” premieres on television April 9 as part of PBS’ “American Masters” series. Republished below is an interview with Burns, originally published Sept. 23, 2020. In 2015, shortly before he died at the age of 82, Oliver Sacks was eating from a Tupperware container of green Jell-O,…
The Latest
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Just how Jewish were ‘The Arabian Nights?’
How many of the “1001 Nights” were Jewish ones? Last month marked the bicentenary of the birth of Richard F. Burton, the Victorian translator of “The Arabian Nights,” or “1001 Nights,” the medieval compendium of tales in Arabic about the storyteller Scheherazade, Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sindbad. The stories date back over centuries across a…
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Can music be educational and still be sexy? These rappers think so.
When you think of rap and hiphop, what probably springs to mind is the type of music that makes it into the Top 40 charts, with lyrics about love or sex or money. But the Brooklyn-based duo Nate and Hila are more likely to rap about compost or bees. To be fair, their bee music…
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Books Love in the time of the Spanish Inquisition: A Q & A with Cambria Gordon
Cambria Gordon’s family sabbatical in Madrid in 2016 became more than a time away from her native Los Angeles. Gordon felt her identity — as a writer and as a Jew — blossom. She launched into a journey of research and inquiry that led to the writing and publication of her new young adult novel,…
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Seinfeld’s impossible apartment is only the tip of the show’s interdimensional iceberg
Does Jerry Seinfeld live in Bizarro World? The question, which is somehow not a judgment on the comedian’s luxe lifestyle or past relationship with a high school student, was posed on Reddit based on the specs of his onetime apartment. User PixelMagic, using a floorplan of Seinfeld’s Upper West Side bachelor pad in his eponymous…
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Can a new ritual shift our relationship to the Holocaust?
How will we remember the Holocaust when all the survivors are gone? This question has driven Jewish educators and historians as survivors have aged. Many educators treat it as a crisis; without testimony from those who actually experienced the atrocities, they will become easier to forget and deny. Holocaust denial is on the rise. There’s…
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‘Shtisel’ gives a surprisingly progressive picture of abortion among the Orthodox. Is it accurate?
Warning: Spoilers for “Shtisel” season three. Conservative Christian opponents to abortion are among the loudest voices in the debate. The most extreme positions often don’t even allow exceptions for rape or the mother’s health. It is easy to assume that other extremely observant religious groups would take a similar stance. Let’s not forget that the…
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Once the staple of New York politics, whatever became of the knish?
All ten leading New York mayoral candidates seem to agree on one thing: New York bagels are better than California bagels (no matter what The New York Times says). Food is an easy way for politicians to win points and present themselves as relatable. Besides, being asked your bagel order is a softball question compared…
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Books ‘This man is not going to daunt me:’ Talking with Philip Roth’s biographer, Blake Bailey
Editor’s note: Two weeks after this interview with Blake Bailey was published, multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct. Details of the allegations may be found here. A masterful writer obsessively preoccupied with whether and how he’d be valued by history; a deeply sensitive charmer with a real…
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