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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Indie drama ‘Leona’ uses a forbidden romance to critique Mexico City’s Orthodox community
(JTA) — At the start of the film “Leona,” an indie drama set in Mexico City, protagonist Ariela watches her close friend immerse in a mikvah, or ritual bath, with a group of other family and friends. It’s an awkward but festive occasion, as the friend’s wedding is fast approaching. After leaving, as soon as…
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WATCH NOW: March 18: A hybrid Passover – How is this holiday different from all others?
Watch the recording here. A year ago, Zoom was new, and in-person seders verboten. Now, with vaccinations picking up along with deep pandemic fatigue, American Jews are grappling with whether and how to gather. And after months of racial reckoning, the holiday’s historic themes of justice and freedom are newly relevant, and complicated. Join Marcella…
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WATCH NOW: March 11: This Song is Your Song – The popular tradition of translating English songs into Yiddish
Watch the talk here. Watch as Forward editor in chief Jodi Rudoren talks to singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn, producer of the hit video of Woody Guthrie’s classic anthem, ‘This Land is Your Land’ in Yiddish, and a panel of Yiddish culture mavens, on the thrills and challenges of creating such intersections between two cultures. The clip…
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They remember their last big vaccine — for polio
My father isn’t one to proffer childhood anecdotes, but there is one story he likes to tell: it’s about his polio vaccine. He was in elementary school when the Sabin vaccine (named for Alfred Sabin, the Jewish scientist who developed it) became available for general use. He lived in a small Connecticut town where crowds…
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Christopher Plummer — admirer of Jewish culture, theater and cuisine
Last year, America was reminded of the anti-Nazi onscreen activism of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who died on Feb. 5 at age 91, after the previous occupant of the White House’s State of the Union address. After that event, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up a copy of the speech in a filmed image which…
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What this week’s Torah portion says about Marjorie Taylor Greene
Members of Congress who took the unprecedented step this week of removing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees in the House of Representatives also took a page from the Bible — which specifically counsels distancing oneself from lies. “From a lying word stay far away, and the guiltless and innocent do not kill, for I…
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Read Trump’s letter of resignation from the Manischewitz Frequent Buyers Circle
On Friday, former President Donald Trump, fresh from his preemptive resignation from SAG-AFTRA, did an end run on a campaign to oust him from the Manischewitz Frequent Buyers Circle by sending a letter of withdrawal — a bold move, given that his punch card was one purchase away from a free box of matzo. The…
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Is Serbia using a Holocaust film as nationalist propaganda?
'Dara of Jasenovac' is the first feature-length narrative about the death camp - but is it trying to score political points?
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The trippy, far-out artist who refused to support the Nazis
In Robin Lutz’s intriguing (yet in the end incomplete) documentary, “M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity,” the iconic Dutch graphic artist (1898-1972), emerges as a complex and entertaining amalgam. He is an intellectual, a curmudgeon, and a tormented artist twisted this way and that over what he perceives to be his own inadequacies. Lutz evokes Escher’s…
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King Solomon wore a unique purple; now we know what that looked like
“Royal purple” is a phrase for a reason — the color was hard to produce in an era when most dyes came from vegetables. The shade, referred to as argaman or tekhelet in Hebrew, is a particularly vibrant hue mentioned only a few times in the Bible, when describing drapings for kings, a carriage for…
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An ode to Ellis Island, whose dingy reality contradicted its majestic dreams
Reading Georges Perec’s prose poem“Ellis Island” (reissued this month in a slim, Statue-of-Liberty green edition courtesy of New Directions), I felt inspired to coin a word. A wee bit precious of me, I’ll admit — but then, as I may have mentioned already, I was reading a book by Georges Perec. This is the writer…
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