Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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An extraordinary yearning to understand a father’s life
Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow By Deborah Tannen Ballantine Books, 272 pages, $28 You may know the Georgetown University sociolinguist Deborah Tannen from her groundbreaking 1990 examination of how gender impacts conversational styles, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.” Or from…
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Does celebs’ Instagram boycott stand a chance of changing Facebook?
If you’ve noticed your Instagram feed is a little quieter than usual today, there’s a good reason. As part of the activist movement Stop Hate for Profit’s “Week of Action,” over two dozen A-Listers are participating in a one-day Instagram “freeze” — meaning no pet pics, snaps of acai pudding or sun-dappled shots of infinity…
The Latest
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BDS calls for boycott of Israeli-Arab internet personality Nas Daily
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is urging Arab content creators to boycott the massively popular Arab-Israeli internet personality, Nas Daily. Nas Daily is the handle of 28-year-old Nuseir Yassin, whose Facebook page, featuring cheery one-minute travelogues, has over 17 million followers. His videos from around the world are treasured for their spirit of global…
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After WWI, Jewish Warsaw crumbled; in my father’s memories, it lived on
I’ve always been proud that my parents were born in Europe — my father in Poland, my mother in Russia. When I was a child, I thought it exotic. As I got older, I liked that it gave me a closer connection to my European roots, compared to most American Jews of my generation whose…
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Why Paul Rudd’s coronavirus PSA for Millennials makes me feel ancient
For years our greatest minds have puzzled over a fundamental paradox of postmodern comedy: Is it possible to be so woefully, self-awarely out-of-touch that you end up on the right side of cool? The conceit was tested yet again in a newly-released COVID-19 PSA tweeted by Pandemic Daddy and Auschwitz thirst-trapper Governor Andrew Cuomo, featuring…
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Weird, shapeless, claustrophobic, disjointed, solipsistic — the newest film from guess who?
Many years before he became the most famous niche, surrealist, seriocomic writer-director in Hollywood, Charlie Kaufman got himself stuck in a tight space. A closet, perhaps, or a hole he was too little to crawl out of. Wherever it was, he was trapped there for a long time, or at least long enough to spark…
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‘The Jewish Enquirer’ gives Brits a ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ of their own
When “The Jewish Enquirer” debuted on Amazon in March of this year, its chosen world of Jewish reportage was on the eve of a major disruption. The timing couldn’t have been better — or, perhaps, worse. The sitcom, which follows freelance reporter Paul Green’s Larry Davidian peregrinations through North London, arrived just before Britain’s leading…
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Profiting from genocide, Disney’s ‘Mulan’ ignores lessons from the Holocaust
In 1944, the Theresienstadt concentration camp underwent a beautification. Living quarters improved. Gardens appeared. A school was established. When representatives of the Danish and International Red Cross came to inspect the camp — a step the Nazis believed essential to securing Denmark and Sweden’s continued compliance — they were pleased. Maurice Rossel, the ICRC’s representative,…
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Would Tevye vote for Trump or Biden? 25 fictional Jews weigh in.
The 2020 voter faces the ballot box during a season of unprecedented challenges — not least of which is the act of voting itself. In addition to the usual gerrymandering and voter suppression, a nationwide pandemic is poised to overwhelm an underfunded postal service. As if that weren’t enough, the president, repeating long-debunked claims of…
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20 phrases you need to know to work as a soda jerk
Editor’s Note: Our lox columnist has written about his past life as a soda jerk in the Bronx during the 1940s and 50s. At that time, working in that trade meant you had to speak the language of the lunch counter. We asked Len for a list of some of the most memorable phrases he…
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‘Stretch one and paint it red’ — Tales from the life of a Bronx soda jerk
It was a very unusual experience — sitting in a wire mesh cage surrounded by dead chickens that were waiting to have their feathers removed. Aside from babysitting, it was my job: “Chicken Plucker.” What was required was a quick jerky movement of the fingers and hand to sever the chicken feathers from the chicken….
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