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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Did the Trump White House really echo ‘Triumph of the Will’?
In film theory, there’s something called the Kuleshov Effect, which teaches that juxtaposing images in sequence can suggest completely different reads of a shot. The typical example is an image of a blank-faced man placed alongside an image of a baby in a casket, a pairing that makes viewers interpret the man’s expression as sad…
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That time the Bee Gees sang a love song to Israel
News that HBO has acquired the rights to air “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” — the first authorized documentary about the famed singing group —made us wonder if it might offer any insight into or reveal the untold story behind the group’s 1971 ballad, “Israel.” The British-by-way-of-Australia group’s 1971 album,…
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This 102-year-old activist was born into the last pandemic. Now she has one message: Vote!
The snapshot showed an elderly woman doing what thousands of Americans are doing this week: mailing her ballot for the presidential election. Yet it also captured the surreal nature of being a citizen at this precise moment in American history. The voter in question — 102-year-old Beatrice Lumpkin — was born in 1918, a year…
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In cancelling ‘GLOW,’ Netflix deals a body blow to representation
Without meaning to, “GLOW,” the Netflix dramedy set in the hairspray-hazed world of women’s pro-wrestling, had one of the most gutting finales in TV history. Warning: spoilers follow. At the end of the show’s third season, Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) runs to catch her flight home for Christmas after a months-long residence in Las Vegas….
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Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody will scare you into voting
Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody continue to be quarantine’s favorite Jewish parents — at least on Twitter. When they’re not being quizzed about internet slang by their son, playing trivia games or singing snatches of commercial jingles, they’re demonstrating how to phone bank all from their home in Arizona. My glorious AF wife Kathryn helped…
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Remembering Eddie Van Halen and his Jewish mentor
Eddie Van Halen, the iconoclastic rock guitarist best known for his instrumental contributions to his namesake band, has died after a year-long bout with throat cancer. Van Halen, who in 1972 founded the group Van Halen with his brother, Alex Van Halen, was 65. Eddie’s flashy guitar-playing, along with frontman David Lee Roth’s outrageous, wild-man…
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Is Philip Roth the male Joan Didion? Asking for TikTok
On Thursday the Swedish Academy will determine its newest Nobel Laureate in Literature. Until today, that precise conversation — had several years ago — was probably the last time anyone was comparing Joan Didion and Philip Roth’s literary legacies. Enter a new, viral TikTok where a young woman has claimed, “Philip Roth is Joan Didion…
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Could Black Jewish author Jamaica Kincaid be the next Nobel laureate?
With the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature just two days away, observers are busy speculating on potential winners. Among the favorites for the prize is Black Jewish author Jamaica Kincaid. Bjorn Wiman, culture editor of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, predicted to the Guardian that either Kincaid or the poet Anne Carson would…
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Dr. Harvey Alter’s Nobel Prize is the success of Jewish America
The announcement that Dr. Harvey Alter will share the 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine with two other physicians for their discovery of hepatitis C will resonate with the families of Jewish doctors around the world — and there are quite a few of those. Alter of course isn’t the first Jewish doctor to win a…
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Has Donald Trump been listening to Blue Oyster Cult?
Has President Donald Trump been listening to Blue Oyster Cult during his four-day stay at Walter Reed Medical Center, where he has been under medical care since Friday as the world’s most famous coronavirus patient? How else to explain yet another of his inscrutable tweets? This afternoon, the Tweeter-in-Chief told the world “Don’t be afraid…
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From humorist to hubris — the rise and fall of Jerry Seinfeld
The first gratuitous name-drop in Jerry Seinfeld’s “Is This Anything?” shows up on page 253. A luxury car reference follows soon after. The name-drop (“I had breakfast with Colin Quinn”) and the car reference (“We chose one of the greatest convertibles of all time, the ‘89 Porsche 911 Speedster, and did the trip”) tease Seinfeld’s…
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Fast Forward As Israel launches war with Iran, Jews around the world open their Psalmbooks
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