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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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Why no Dylan album will ever surpass ‘Stormy Season’
When I got the text from a friend of mine, asking if I’d heard Bob Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” I hadn’t yet had a chance to listen to it all the way through. “Honestly, the music isn’t much,” my friend wrote. “But the lyrics are amazing.” She quoted a stanza from “Key West,” her…
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Dylan painted his masterpiece — the next year he painted another one
It’s as predictable as death and taxes. Bob Dylan releases a new album and critics hyperventilate that it is his best since his masterful 1975 album, “Blood on the Tracks.” The latter was an acoustic song cycle largely about the dissolution of a marriage (his marriage?), and it does indeed stand the test of time…
The Latest
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The best Dylan comeback album featured no Dylan songs at all
Bob Dylan always liked stories about people who get up and go somewhere, and then come back. They are constructs about change; in the end, the subject comes back — and is a different person. For a young man thirsting to grow, you can see the appeal. Indeed, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” one of…
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‘Will men keep explaining Dylan to me into eternity?’
To be a Bob Dylan fan has too often meant occupying 'a world of men.'
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Dylan’s latest album comes at a time when we need it most
The Forward, a Jewish publication, asks me a question: “Is ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ Bob Dylan’s best album since “Blood on the Tracks?” As a Jew, I can imagine only one possible answer: “yes and no.” Musically, it’s not even close. “Desire” has more beautiful melodies, tighter lyrics and far better hooks. I also think,…
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Life, death, heartbreak, disillusionment — Dylan’s first album as an old man
Bob Dylan’s Grammy-award-winning comeback album, 1997’s “Time Out of Mind,” is a glorious record of death and rebirth. Death insofar as the album’s songs frequently have themes of mortality and aging (“I been all around the world, boys / Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door”)(“It’s not dark yet, but…
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50 shades of unconditional longing in a tale of erotic obsession
22 Minutes of Unconditional Love By Daphne Merkin Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 238 pages, $26 In her self-revelatory nonfiction, Daphne Merkin has written memorably about her bouts of depression and her sexual fixation on spanking. Her latest novel, “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love,” tries to meld two traditions: the erotic tale of female submission and…
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The 16 customers you’ll meet at the Zabar’s lox counter
Outside, the sun peeks out over the high condo buildings and blazes across 80th Street into the windows of Zabar’s. New Yorkers are scurrying up and down Broadway. Mommies stroll by with adorable babies on their backs or in their strollers. When I’m at the window, I wave at the passing kids. Some wave back;…
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The extraordinary artistic devotion of Ida Haendel
She was never quite as famous as the men: Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jascha Heifetz. But if you heard Ida Haendel play violin once, you knew her tone anywhere: the shuddery, overwhelming pointedness she gave to any piece of music. Her music was beautiful, and unsparing. If you didn’t want to weep, you were better…
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Over 120 Neo-Nazi band pages found active on Facebook
Neo-Nazi rockers with swastika tattoos and Insane Clown Posse-like makeup. Album art showing the gates of Auschwitz. Songs longing for a “pure f—ing genocide.” For years, Facebook has allowed bands centered on this content a home on their platform — but now the social media giant is racing to remove them. An investigation by Al…
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2 Forward writers win Excellence in Feature Journalism awards
The Society for Features Journalism, which celebrates innovation in lifestyle, arts and entertainment journalism, recognized the diverse work of two Forward writers at its 2020 Excellence in Features Awards. Contributing Art Critic Jackson Arn won second place in the Arts & Entertainment Commentary Portfolio category for his incisive (but considered) review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s essay…
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