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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Written during the Holocaust, a song finds a second life as a social justice anthem
A simple melody, straining upward and urging defiant silence, was composed at the Klooga work camp in Estonia in the 1940s. But for decades, scholars wondered who wrote the song, or how it even sounded. Starting a year after World War II ended, the words to “Lomir shvaygn” (“Stay Silent”) appeared in collections of songs…
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How a visionary movie director predicted the dire state of culture in 2020
If “culture” means new books, new exhibitions, new music and cinema and so on, 2020 was a good year for culture. Defined almost any other way, 2020 was a terrible year for culture — as it was for pretty much everything else. As I think about 2020, what I immediately remember about the last 346…
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Reading 30 books in 30 days taught me I know nothing about espionage
For most of my post-graduate life, I’ve taken a class each semester on a subject that piqued my curiosity. Abnormal Psychology? Check. Forensic Anthropology? Check. Homicide Investigation? Jane Austen? Linen Weaving? The History of Afghanistan? Fire Science? The Communication Techniques of Plants? Sure! During Covid, my ability to take classes at my local universities has…
The Latest
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‘Lighting Hanukkah Candles in Death’s Kingdom:’ A story by Elie Wiesel
Editor’s note: This story by Elie Wiesel was first published in the Forward in Yiddish on December 12, 1969. This Hanukkah, we decided it was time to give the original Yiddish new life. This new translation, including aspects of the story not included in previous English translations, is by Myra Mniewski and Chana Pollack, the…
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Celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday with ‘Ode to Joy’ in Yiddish
Read this article in Yiddish. This week marks the 250th anniversary of what is believed to be the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most influential composers of all time, and a favorite among the Jews in Eastern Europe. Beethoven’s popular “Moonlight Sonata,” for example, is the topic of a wonderful children’s tale…
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How sweet it is to (finally) return to Zabar’s!
I slept until about 12:30 p.m. today. When I woke up, I noticed that I was not tired. I had been tired upon awakening for previous days, maybe weeks, months? But this day, I was wide-awake. As I looked around the room, I noticed that everything that came into view did so with great definition….
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Thanks to outdoor dining, it’s beginning to look a lot like Sukkot
Most years, Sukkot lasts about a week. But in this year of plague, the holiday has become a months-long event, with no sign of ending anytime soon. Secular sukkahs are all around us. They’re just going by a new name: “outdoor dining.” On daily walks through my neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, I’ve watched…
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Why the mayor of Ramallah does it all
Musa Hadid, the middle-aged, mustachioed and overextended mayor of Ramallah is meeting with staff to discuss a Christmas tree lighting. Among the details to be ironed out: several Santas rappelling down buildings, a flash mob and zeppelins. Well, not really zeppelins. An aide suggests that this word sets up expectations that would be tough to…
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Even dictionaries couldn’t keep up with language in 2020
So much happened in 2020 that not even the Word of the Year folks at the Oxford English Dictionary could come up with just one word to describe the past year; instead, the august dictionary folks issued a 38-page report on “words of an unprecedented year” — complete with colorful bar charts distilling how we…
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For Joseph Epstein and The Wall Street Journal, the control is the point
You might have heard about a little Wall Street Journal op-ed that went viral this weekend for arguing that future First Lady Dr. Jill Biden should drop the title “Doctor” from her name. Many decried the column, by the Jewish essayist and former editor of The American Scholar Joseph Epstein, as sexist from its first…
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The dinosaur menorah started as a hobby. Here’s how it became the internet’s weirdest Judaica trend.
Eleven months out of the year, Benjamin Packard is a pretty normal guy. Packard, 37, lives in Oakland, California. He enjoys a rewarding career as a “mild-mannered financial advisor who helps millennials prepare for retirement.” He’s an enthusiastic dad to two young kids. But as Hanukkah approaches, everything changes. “Every holiday season, for about thirty…
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