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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Music
How Herb Alpert made the most underrated Jewish Christmas album of all time
This holiday season inevitably brings to mind all the classic Christmas songs that have been written by Jews. Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is the big blini, of course, having been covered more than 500 times since Bing Crosby first sang it on his NBC Radio show on Christmas Day 1941. But there are over a…
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With huckster Trump in charge, the carnival goes on — and on and on
One of the few things Fox News and the Guardian newspaper agree upon is Donald Trump’s resemblance to a carnival huckster. This indelibly American image brings to mind Harold Hill, the fast-talking trickster who steals the show — and very nearly the savings of a small Iowa town — in “The Music Man.” Yet, for…
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Meet the Orthodox Jewish Santa who trains America’s Christmas performers
Is it possible to be both a full time Santa and a full time Jew? Rick Rosenthal says yes
The Latest
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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…
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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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Fast Forward Netanyahu reveals prostate cancer treatment, says he hid diagnosis during Iran war