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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Christmas was my favorite holiday — until I got too Jewish
When I was a child, Christmas was my favorite holiday. My dad isn’t Jewish, but that’s not even why we celebrated Christmas; my Jewish mom grew up celebrating too. Her mother had been jealous of how much fun it seemed, so she insisted on having trees and stockings and carols. When I was growing up,…
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On their first Noel at home, more interfaith families are trying out trees and stockings
Judging by the current contents of her apartment, Lauren Schreiber Sasaki is a woman who loves nothing more than celebrating Christmas at home. On the mantel, a “Merry Christmas” garland hangs beneath a large collection of menorahs. An advent calendar shares a wall with several Magen David ornaments. Atop the coffee table stands the pièce…
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These were the 20 best pop culture moments of 2020
During the thousands of days of 2020, the way we consume pop culture has radically changed. Case in point: This list begins in January with an Oscars speech that my boyfriend and I, who had just moved to Brooklyn, watched from a bar we’d already designated as our “regular place.” We exhaled aerosols everywhere. We…
The Latest
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Once enemies, Anthony Fauci and Larry Kramer developed a surprising bromance
One way to celebrate the 80th birthday on Dec. 24 of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would be to re-examine his complex friendship with the American Jewish author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer. When Kramer died in May of this year at age 84, Fauci recounted in…
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I was an outsider at Christmas — until I found ‘The Nutcracker’
Until I discovered “The Nutcracker,” December was the season of fruitlessly trying to explain Hanukkah to my mostly non-Jewish friends. I never wished to be anything but Jewish, but I secretly longed to experience the kind of Christmas cheer I read about in books. I wanted a big family gathering, with a tree and mistletoe…
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Chinese food, movies, speed-dating — 5 Jewish things to do this Christmas.
Most Christmases, many Jews have their own inviolable traditions. For my family — and quite possibly yours — that means a movie (probably one that will be nominated for Oscars and be otherwise unmemorable) and Chinese food (a welcome consolation following dreck like “Benjamin Button”). Obviously this isn’t most Christmases. Yes, I’ve heard tell of…
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Remembering Catie Lazarus, a beacon of optimism and humor
The American Jewish comedian Catie Lazarus, who died on Dec. 13 at age 44, made interviews into performance art through affectionate sibling-like jibes at guests, as if they were members of an extended mishpocheh. Her “Employee of the Month” series of chats at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub in downtown Manhattan featured sassy challenges to…
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21 totally on-point pop culture predictions for 2021
In 2019, save a few health and human services professionals, no one anticipated a new year gripped by a global pandemic. We were in the dark about Broadway dimming its lights and film projectors lying fallow. We couldn’t have imagined the Emmys being doled out by Hazmat-suited gofers. We might have expected the continuation of…
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Written during the Holocaust, a song finds a second life as a social justice anthem
A simple melody, straining upward and urging defiant silence, was composed at the Klooga work camp in Estonia in the 1940s. But for decades, scholars wondered who wrote the song, or how it even sounded. Starting a year after World War II ended, the words to “Lomir shvaygn” (“Stay Silent”) appeared in collections of songs…
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How a visionary movie director predicted the dire state of culture in 2020
If “culture” means new books, new exhibitions, new music and cinema and so on, 2020 was a good year for culture. Defined almost any other way, 2020 was a terrible year for culture — as it was for pretty much everything else. As I think about 2020, what I immediately remember about the last 346…
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Reading 30 books in 30 days taught me I know nothing about espionage
For most of my post-graduate life, I’ve taken a class each semester on a subject that piqued my curiosity. Abnormal Psychology? Check. Forensic Anthropology? Check. Homicide Investigation? Jane Austen? Linen Weaving? The History of Afghanistan? Fire Science? The Communication Techniques of Plants? Sure! During Covid, my ability to take classes at my local universities has…
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Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
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