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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Muse to Jews, Cloris Leachman played funny, flawed women
“Every time I hear a horse whinny I will forever think of Cloris’ unforgettable Frau Blücher,” Mel Brooks wrote Wednesday on Twitter, as the media reported Cloris Leachman’s death at the age of 94. Indeed, few characters or performances have been so linked to Foley sound as Leachman’s turn as the eldritch housekeeper from Brooks’…
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150 years ago, a Yiddish writer knew all about climate change
With the recent re-introduction of rabbis into the German army, I started to read about rabbis in the German army during the First World War and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the 150th anniversary of which is now being commemorated. As often happens in the course of research, serendipity led me to an unrelated and…
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Watch out, Hamilton. Janet Yellen’s coming for your hip-hop cred
Newly-minted Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is already a less problematic fave than Alexander Hamilton, an adulterer, elitist social climber and — despite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s protestations — a possible slave owner. But does a song about her slap? We now know: Yes. About a week ago, Marketplace, inspired by an off-handed remark from Joe Biden, asked…
The Latest
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For Mozart’s 265th birthday, remembering his great Jewish collaborator
This story, initially published in October, 2018, has been republished in honor of Mozart’s 265th birthday on Jan. 27, 2021. The librettist Lorenzo da Ponte — an exiled Jewish-born Venetian who turned to the arts after proving too irreverent for the Church — had a lot in common with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The two shared…
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Holocaust survivors are now receiving their first doses of the vaccine — and fame
Elderly Holocaust survivors are among the most susceptible to the current pandemic; 900 died of Covid in Israel alone. That is why it was heartening to see, on Twitter, one 97-year-old Holocaust survivor grinning because she had just beaten Covid, and another smiling after receiving her first dose of the vaccine. My 97-Year-old Great Grandma,…
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If you can guess how HBO’s ‘Possessions’ ends, I’m scared of you
I’m reasonably confident you won’t be quick to solve the murder mystery at the heart of “Possessions.” If you do work out the exact whys and wherefores — before, say, episode four of six — I’m more than a bit worried about you. Debuting on HBO Max on Thursday, the French and Hebrew language thriller…
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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ final book wins big at National Jewish Book Awards
The National Jewish Book Awards selected the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times” as the most notable Jewish book of 2020. Sacks, a prolific author and a leader in modern Jewish thought, has won several prizes at the awards program, which the Jewish Book Council has operated since 1950….
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How a penniless immigrant named Igor skyrocketed to Broadway and Hollywood fame
Mike Nichols: A Life By Mark Harris Penguin Press, 688 pages, $29.99 After six days on the S.S. Bremen in 1939, the little Berliner fleeing the Third Reich disembarked in New York. Igor Michael Peschowsky was seven, “a self-contained, unsmiling child,” and bald as an egg – the unexpected result of a whooping-cough vaccine. At…
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How celebrated illustrator Peter Sís found a Holocaust hero in his own backyard
The day after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the author and illustrator Peter Sís met with his editor to discuss a new book. The former president’s rise was already drawing comparisons to the crises of the 20th century. Still, Sís couldn’t have predicted that he would finish his latest work, a children’s tale of…
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Art An artist in exile talks Tu B’Shvat tarot and working from her childhood home
During the pandemic, Jessica Tamar Deutsch has been considering exile as she relearns how to paint. Specifically, she’s been thinking about the title character in “The Lost Princess,” a story by Rabbi Nachman, the mystic founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement, about a young woman who disappears from her home after displeasing her kingly father….
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She didn’t go to Hebrew school, but she she made an extremely accurate movie about it — a conversation with Olivia Peace
The most important scenes in “Tahara” take place where the best shul drama goes down: the ladies’ lounge. Possibly the most important amenity a synagogue can offer, the ladies’ lounge features way too many wicker baskets, a selection of castoff artwork incorporating the phrase “tikkun olam” and a well-worn couch conducive to dawdling and dishing…
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