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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‘Borat 2’ is a riot, but slandering a nation’s history goes too far
Borat was never a victimless enterprise. In “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America,” the Kazakh journalist invited an RV full of frat brothers to reminisce about the days of slavery (they needed zero prompting, save for their companion’s foreign, sympathetic presence). More troublingly, a kindly Jewish couple operating a kosher bed and breakfast provided the venue…
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Is Sinclair Lewis’s 1936 play about American fascism even timelier today?
In 1936, as the United States struggled to overcome the Depression, Hitler pressed ahead with his revival of the German military and fascist forces in Europe continued to erode the norms of public life, Sinclair Lewis debuted the theatrical adaptation of his 1935 novel of “It Can’t Happen Here.” Co-written with playwright John C. Moffitt,…
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Winding up in bed with Borat’s daughter may be the least of Rudy Giuliani’s problems
One would think it would be impossible to shame Rudy Giuliani at this juncture, and yet… America’s erstwhile mayor and current personal attorney to the president appeared to have been bested by Borat, who seemed to catch him on film mid-Toobin maneuver. Giuliani now claims the footage is deceptive and an effort to dampen his…
The Latest
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Trump should know better than to mess with Lesley Stahl
As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, President Donald Trump reportedly stormed out of a room at the White House after “60 Minutes” host Lesley Stahl asked him some questions he thought were mean. As one White House staffer told the Washington Post, “The interview was not that bad…. She just had a tone he didn’t…
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At 94, Mel Brooks makes his first ever political endorsement ad
While Mel Brooks has dabbled in the local politics of a frontier town, enjoined theatergoers to join a Nazi kickline and famously proclaimed “It’s good to be king,” he’s never made a video endorsing a political candidate. Even at 94, there’s a first time for everything. On October 21, Brooks’ son Max posted his father’s…
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Aaron Sorkin’s moralizing liberal fantasy betrays the real ‘Chicago 7’
According to the lore provided to the press, the development of Aaron Sorkin’s new movie, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” originated in 2007 when Steven Spielberg, who at the time was toying with making the film himself, summoned Sorkin to his home and urged him to write the screenplay for him. Interestingly, Sorkin had…
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How Jeffrey Toobin might have commented on the sex scandal he created
For decades, writer and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has dispensed commentary on the political scandals du jour. Today, he is one. On Monday, the New Yorker suspended Toobin after he exposed himself on a staff Zoom call last week. Multiple people on the call said that Toobin, apparently believing that his video was disconnected, “switched…
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Sol LeWitt: The conceptual artist who made an app of himself
The history of conceptual art runs parallel to the history of big tech. Their peaks and valleys are the same — all you have to do is change the names and some (though not too many) of the buzzwords. Both started out as young, peripheral and idealistic as the counterculture that inspired them. Over the…
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Could Trump become the first president to flee America since Lindbergh?
This weekend, in another totally normal development, President Donald Trump floated the idea of absconding to another country. Facing dire polling and debtsand court cases set to activate should he lose a second term, he wondered aloud what he’d do if Joe Biden emerges victorious in November. “I’m not gonna feel so good,” Trump said…
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This father-daughter duo is podcasting through the pandemic — and they won’t stop until they know ‘everything’
10-year-old Rasa Smith used to feel jealous when she heard kids on the radio. “I’ll never be on a podcast,” she recalled thinking while listening to a program hosted by a fellow pre-teen. But on that front, she’s proven herself very wrong. When the pandemic shut down schools in her hometown of Missoula, Mont., Rasa,…
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Sacha Baron Cohen interviewed a Holocaust survivor for the new ‘Borat.’ Now her daughter’s suing.
(JTA) — The daughter of a late Holocaust survivor is suing to have her mother’s appearance in Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming “Borat” sequel removed from the film, stating that the comedy mocks “the Holocaust and Jewish culture.” Baron Cohen interviewed Judith Dim Evans earlier this year “under false pretenses with the intent of appropriating her…
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