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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Against all odds, Holocaust survivors retain their optimism — and their music
Directed by Tod Lending, “Saul & Ruby’s Holocaust Survivor Band” recounts the experiences of two Holocaust survivors, Saul Dreier, 91 and Ruby Sosnowicz, 87, who’ve joined forces to form a Klezmer Band that celebrates their survival — or, more to the point, how they’ve thrived despite enduring Holocaust atrocities. A testimony to optimism and resilience,…
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How Australia almost became a Jewish homeland
Growing up, I spent most of my time with my family at my grandparent’s farm in Western Australia. I didn’t know how unusual my grandfather was, with his shade house full of the roses and orchids he hybridized, with his robust singing of opera and his dry sense of humor. He was a polite, reserved…
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Jewish clergy rally in support of immigrants on hunger strike at New Jersey jail
Rabbi Avram Mlotek was washing dishes and listening to the radio when he heard that seven immigrant detainees had started a hunger strike at Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey. “I’m from Bergen County, so that set off my antenna,” said Mlotek, who lives in Manhattan and leads BASE Hillel, a community outreach organization…
The Latest
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Nice to have you back, Sophia Loren; sorry about the movie
“The Life Ahead,” Sophia Loren’s long-awaited return to feature film, has one, central, ugly, thudding metaphor at its center. About a third of the way through the treacly Netflix drama about a Muslim orphan and his aged Jewish caretaker, protagonist Momo (newcomer Ibrahima Gueye) peers around his bed to see a CGI lioness striding towards…
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Yes, he sold art to the Nazis — but was he a traitor or a hero?
“The Last Vermeer,” marking producer Dan Friedkin’s directorial debut, is part melodrama and part thriller, but at its core it’s an exploration of moral complexities that regrettably disappears into distracting subplots and a large cast of indistinguishable characters. By the time the viewer appreciates the complicated ethical and psychological questions at play, the film is…
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Sammy Davis Jr.’s daughter understood her father’s commitment to Judaism
Tracey Davis, the daughter of Sammy Davis Jr., who died on Nov. 2 at age 59, co-wrote two memoirs of her father, implying that as the proverb goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. From the mid-1950s onward, Hollywood stars including Carroll Baker, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism, but Davis was…
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From the Holocaust, lessons in how to live today
When I was researching and writing “The Takeaway Men” — a novel about fraternal twin girls who were born in a DP camp in Germany after World War II and then brought to Queens, New York, as toddlers by their refugee parents — I never imagined that it would be published during a pandemic. Even…
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On Joe Biden’s 78th birthday, what his favorite film says about his views on antisemitism, Torah and more
President-elect Joe Biden is probably busy this Nov. 20, his 78th birthday. After all, he’s having to put in extra hustle as his reality-blind predecessor tries his damnedest to block his transition. There are national security briefings to wrangle from a closed-off outgoing staff. There are pandemic preparations to make while Trump plans in-person White…
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‘My Cousin Vinny’ director thinks Giuliani could learn a lesson from his movie
Rudy Giuliani, the surprise star of “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm” and Donald Trump’s personal attorney, alluded to another comedy classic at his already-infamous news conference. Shortly before hair dye streamed down his face, and he, predictably, implicated George Soros in helping orchestrate large-scale voter fraud, Giuliani asked the gaggle in attendance if they had seen the…
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‘The Undoing’ undid the Jewishness of the book that inspired it. Here’s why the author doesn’t mind
Sarah Silverman has mixed feelings about “The Undoing.” To be sure, there’s plenty to love in HBO’s latest contribution to the prestige TV scene, a miniseries centered around marriage counselor Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman) who discovers after a gruesome murder that her own seemingly perfect husband (Hugh Grant) may in fact be a philandering sociopath….
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What I learned from the work of Claude Vigée
To write about my own encounter with the work of Claude Vigée is to try to speak with the same clarity, his clarity, which I now must try to make my own. There is nothing more difficult than paying homage to someone whom one admires – for his work, his courage, and the brilliant lucidity…
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