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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What are the most (and least) Jewish inauguration speeches ever?
On Jan. 20, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will deliver the 59th inaugural address, a tradition that began with George Washington, was denied to a handful of presidential replacements and — I’ve learned through a thorough study of the 58 other speeches — one that, like a particularly long Yom Kippur sermon, is given to a…
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10 songs for President Biden — an inauguration Spotify playlist
Every presidential inauguration – heck, every major public event – deserves a custom-made playlist. In putting one together for the inauguration of Joe Biden as president of the United States on Wednesday, Jan. 20, at noon, it was tempting to make a list of songs not unlike those you would play at a wedding –…
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‘I got the Covid vaccine; don’t hate me’
My husband and I joined an absurdly long line of seniors outside a lower East Side high school to get the coveted Covid vaccine. Prior to the pandemic this long a queue happened only for a hot sample sale, Beyoncé concert tickets or at Zabar’s smoked fish counter. But nobody was complaining. The vaccine had…
The Latest
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How Phil Spector’s Jewish success story became a tale of paranoia, drugs and murder
The record producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector, who died on Jan. 16 at age 81, showed that historical and personal trauma can motivate, and also destroy, Jewish artistic urges. Spector’s decades of abusive behavior toward colleagues, especially women, culminated in the 2003 murder of the actress Lana Clarkson, for which he was sentenced to…
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Will Jewish schools finally address their segregationist past?
Editor’s note: In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Forward is resurfacing some of our recent coverage related to the Black-Jewish experience and racial justice. This article originally appeared in July, 2020. In the two months since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, American Jewish day schools have begun to rethink how…
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Black Jews, he says, ‘get traumatized twice.’ To cope, he painted their experience.
Editor’s note: In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Forward is resurfacing some of our recent coverage related to the Black-Jewish experience and racial justice. This article originally appeared in June, 2020. “I am tired of talking,” said MaNishtana, the writer, Orthodox rabbi and artist behind two striking images that capture the Black…
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In the 1920s, a Black cantor moved the world
Editor’s note: In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Forward is resurfacing some of our recent coverage related to the Black-Jewish experience and racial justice. This article originally appeared in July, 2020. In June, Henry Sapoznik was scrolling through Facebook when he saw something he’d been seeking for mpre than 40 years: a…
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In a case of French fascism, portents of a pro-Trump mob
In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, I searched for analogies. I thought about the French far right in 1934, and I thought about France in 1945, when the newly liberated country tried to purge itself of its Nazi collaborators. Between the two events was one figure who can illuminate our present moment:…
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For Sylvain Sylvain, the Jewish heart of the New York Dolls
For a rock and roll-obsessed teenager in the early-to-mid-1980s, picking up the first two New York Dolls albums was like stumbling across a pair of travel brochures from an enchanting destination that no longer existed. Whenever I visited my dad in New York City I could still traverse the same filthy lower Manhattan sidewalks that…
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Why Israel’s multilingual approach to vaccination works — and why our monolingual one doesn’t
Israel’s Ministry of Health has been taking a very multilingual approach to its vaccination campaign, with videos in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian and Amharic on vaccines and how they work, plus hasbara in Yiddish. All the videos are up on YouTube and can be viewed here: The short and clear one-minute videos discuss subjects like how…
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Documentary explores the “Shared Legacies” of America’s Black and Jewish communities
In March of 1968, in the throes of the American Civil Rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. attended the conservative movement’s annual Rabbinical Assembly convention in the Catskills to honor one of his closest friends and collaborators, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Upon arrival, King and Heschel were greeted by hundreds of rabbis lining the…
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