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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A new musical finds life in a Soviet Jewish homeland
Giles Howe has a story to tell about two Jewish homelands. The first is Israel, which he first encountered, like many Millennial Jews, on a Taglit Birthright trip. On his return — realizing he “knew very little about a lot” — he decided to explore his heritage to find where he belonged. He soon discovered…
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How will history judge Trump and his enablers? You’re asking the wrong question.
From the day Donald Trump was ushered into the White House to the day he was ushered out, commentators have found comfort in the phrase “history will judge.” If they mean that historians will not look kindly on Donald Trump and his enablers, they are probably right. But right or wrong, their “judgment” will probably…
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WATCH NOW: February 23: Meet the Forward 50
Watch here. Every year we publish the Forward 50, a list of remarkable people who have had a particular impact on our communities. This year, we’re asking them to join our Editor-in-Chief, Jodi Rudoren, for a weekly series of Zoominars about … whatever is on their minds. The list is a mix of activists and…
The Latest
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Did the Bernie meme become sexist?
You know the image: the mittens, the huddled posture, the flyaway white hair, the manila envelope. At this point, the iconic picture of Bernie Sanders at Joe Biden’s inauguration has been burned into your brain with the force of a thousand memes. Collectively delighted, the internet edited him into photos, curated outfits based on his…
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Books You’ve probably never heard about the world’s first female rabbi. Sigal Samuel wants to change that
If you think female rabbis are a modern phenomenon, Sigal Samuel is here to change your mind — just like she changed hers. Samuel grew up in an Orthodox community where the idea of female clergy was considered deeply untraditional. So when, deep in an “internet rabbit hole,” she stumbled on the story of the…
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Cicely Tyson, longtime ally of Jews, occasional speaker of Yiddish
The actress Cicely Tyson, who died on Jan. 28 at age 96, was justly celebrated for her roles honoring African-American experiences in “Sounder” (1972), “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (1974), and “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” (1994), among others. But less has been said about her early work with stellar Jewish performers, and…
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A hospital emergency in the time of COVID
My urologist and I have an arrangement. If symptoms of urinary infection arise I am to go to his office immediately, so that he can determine the cause, and prescribe an appropriate anti-bioic so as to nip the infection in its early stages, before any real harm is done. I dislike going to the urologist…
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To understand the GameStop story, watch ‘The Big Short’
So you’re trying to understand the GameStop story, in which a subreddit banded together and managed to bankrupt a hedge fund, causing utter chaos on Wall Street all week. If you’re not involved in finance, it can be pretty confusing, full of jargon like pulling a “short squeeze” and requiring a decent grasp of how…
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Can we laugh at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Jewish lasers?’
I have a theory. Sometime in 2018, Marjorie Taylor Greene, recovering from periodontal surgery and still coming down from anesthesia, was flipping through channels and got very confused. First she landed on Norman Jewison’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” got bored with the character of the old butcher, and found her way to “Star Wars.” Somewhere…
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The Bernie Sanders meme was an antidote to political branding — until it became a commodity
When my boyfriend sent me the first of hundreds of Bernie Sanders mittens memes I have consumed in the past 10 days, I was watching inauguration coverage and writing about Ella Emhoff’s coat. I knew there were going to be a lot of great coats, and I enjoyed every minute I spent thinking about them:…
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Orbisculate: How a made-up word became a way to honor a father lost to Covid
Hilary and Jonathan Krieger do not remember the first time their father, Neil, used the word “orbisculate.” They were just kids then, and he said the made-up word (pronounced ȯr-BIS-kyoo-leyt) meant “to accidentally squirt juice and/or pulp into one’s eye” or other body part — as in, what happens whenever one attempts to eat a…
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