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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J.D. Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’: A Jewish defense
Ron Howard's adaptation of J.D. Vance's book has been widely derided as poverty porn, but a Jewish reading yields something far-more nuanced
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Why the Covid lockdown has been good for Judaism
The months when a pandemic swept across our world and turned our lives into disarray were possibly the best months of my life. I am not in denial. I understand fully what the consequences of the pandemic were — businesses hurt; precious lives lost. And yet, it was hard not to appreciate what was clearly…
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There’s no way I can write a normal tribute to Woody Allen
Few still-living artists have tested the premise of the Death of the Author as much as Woody Allen — not so much for what he did, but what he’s accused of doing. While as a filmmaker, Allen, who turns a vital 85 today, has cemented as indelible a cinematic persona as Chaplin’s Tramp, in the…
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Is there life after Zabar’s?
So far so good. I don’t have Covid. I’m working hard at it; following all the guidelines, but being super aware that life is different now. Life changed dramatically for me in March when my friend Scott, store manager of Zabar’s, informed me that he didn’t want me working at Zabar’s until, as he put…
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For the real-life Alice of ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ a new reason to be thankful
This is a story about Alice of “Alice’s Restaurant” fame. “Alice’s Restaurant” is a song and a movie and once was an actual restaurant. But more than anything, “Alice’s Restaurant” is a frame of mind, one that might best be illustrated by the thousands of people who have helped the real-life woman immortalized in the…
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Looking for the truth in Gaza — through a camera lens
Jehad al-Saftawi grew up in Gaza. The field in front of his boyhood home was used to launch rockets into Israel. As he approached manhood, he witnessed Israel rain down rockets of its own, leveling apartment blocks. To get the full picture of where he comes from, Saftawi insists on making both of these truths…
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In France, waiting (and waiting and waiting) for school to be normal again
Like lots of American teens, I’m sitting at home on a Tuesday writing this when I’d normally be in school. Unlike most American teens, I’m in France. I’m not French. My dad got a two-year job six years ago and we’ve been here ever since. Not that I’m complaining; I’ve grown to love this country…
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Navigating fear and indifference in a pandemic
Josef Stalin famously said, “One death is a tragedy, 1 million deaths is a statistic.” This fittingly explains why many of us no longer feel impacted by the millions of new coronavirus cases —12 million cases is incomprehensible; it is a statistic. Toward the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I strongly felt the impact this…
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If you’re an Iranian Jew with an Israeli husband, watching ‘Tehran’ can be complicated
I don’t know what I was expecting from “Tehran,” the Israeli spy thriller about a Mossad intelligence agent sent to Iran to disable the army’s radar system so that the Israeli Air Force can bomb an Iranian nuclear plant. But, because of my strong connection to both countries, I’d been anticipating the release of this…
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What brings us closer to Andre Gregory is what keeps us apart
This Is Not My Memoir By Andre Gregory with Todd London Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 208 pages, $27 Near the beginning of “My Dinner with Andre,” as the Wallace Shawn character played by Wallace Shawn is describing his trepidation around meeting Andre Gregory for dinner, he relates an anecdote, relayed to him by a mutual…
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Thanksgiving in the time of COVID: How we’re safely celebrating and showing gratitude
It’s going to be a Thanksgiving like none other. The United States is in the grips of the worst spike in the COVID-19 pandemic to date, imbuing every decision around the holiday with new concerns — especially as public health experts have warned that Thanksgiving gatherings will only lead to an even more dramatic uptick…
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