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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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I speak for the tribe who followed Carl Reiner
When I was growing up on Long Island, our house had a living room with orange-fabric couches (it was the 70s after all) and an upright piano flanked by two dark brown wood cabinets. On one side was a bar where my dad would have a Gin & Tonic (with a Stella D’oro breadstick) every…
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Milton Glaser loved New York — and was its greatest observer
If you’ve ever lived in New York City — or set foot in it, or talked to someone about it, or watched one of the approximately three billion films about it — you know it has a complicated relationship with its past. On the one hand, there’s a sort of maniacal drive to the future…
The Latest
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Mel Brooks in ‘deep shock’ after losing Carl Reiner, says son Max Brooks
Mel Brooks was there when his longtime friend Carl Reiner passed away in the middle of the night on June 29. According to Brooks’ son, Max, the director doesn’t yet know how he’s managing the loss. “My dad’s friendship with Carl goes back 70 years,” Max Brooks said during a June 30 webinar for Moment…
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Why comedy was the perfect career for a Bronx-bred Jewish boy like Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner, who died on June 28 at age 98, was that most unusual of performers, a funny straight man. A collaborative artist of uncommon skill, he is perhaps most celebrated for having created and written the 1960s sitcom “The Dick van Dyke Show,” originally intended for himself to star in. Dismissing rumors that producers…
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12 clips to remember Carl Reiner by
Carl Reiner had good reason to disdain bananas. Though he had a 70-year career in film and television, he was regularly referred to in his early appearances as Sid Caesar’s “second banana.” When he sat down with Mel Brooks’ 2,000-year-old man, one critic noted that he had risen to the level of “second-banana supreme.” Yet…
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Why we shouldn’t be quoting H.L. Mencken
It was simultaneously surprising and ironic to read a quote from the notoriously anti-Semitic H.L. Mencken in your July 28 article about anti-Semitism. Mencken infamously wrote the following in his 1930 “Treatise on the Gods,” one of his best known books: “The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever…
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Carl Reiner, ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ creator and Mel Brooks’ other half, dies at 98
Carl Reiner, the Mark Twain Prize-winning writer, actor and director whose sharp and open-hearted voice shaped over 50 years of comedy, has died at 98. According to his son the filmmaker Rob Reiner, he passed away on the evening of June 29. Reiner, best known for creating and acting in “The Dick Van Dyke Show,”…
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Why Carl Reiner was the dreamiest boss I ever had
“My secretaries stay a long time,” Carl Reiner said as he greeted me at the start of the job interview, “so I don’t know what I’m supposed to ask.” Okay, I was plotzing to get the job. Though at 26 I’d worked in show business long enough to know that celebrities were often nothing like…
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Remembering Jean Daniel — a journalist of unshakeable distinction and integrity
Jean Daniel, who died in February at age 99, was born Jean Daniel Bensaïd to a Jewish family in Blida, northern Algeria. He spent his long life analyzing his feelings of Jewish identity in memoirs, while also producing a mountain of political commentary as founder and executive editor of Le Nouvel Observateur. It is perhaps…
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Music Bob Dylan becomes oldest artist in UK with a #1 album of new songs
Paul Simon once lamented the fact he always seemed to come in second to Bob Dylan. “I don’t like coming in second,” Simon told Rolling Stone in 2011. Yet, there are some titles where getting second place is not quite so bad. Among them: oldest artist to reach #1 on the UK charts with an…
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Why Sacha Baron Cohen is the anti-Zuckerberg
On Saturday June 27 in Olympia, Wash., Sacha Baron Cohen appeared incognito at a right-wing rally, leading the crowd in a chorus of gleeful murderous intent. In a false beard and overstuffed overalls, the “Who Is America” comic welcomed rallygoers at the pro-gun “March For Our Rights” event to inject such “liberal” targets as CNN,…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
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Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
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Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
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Opinion The secret cost of Israel’s wars ravaged my family. It’s only getting worse
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