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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Here’s what a 16th-century rabbi said when Henry VIII asked for relationship advice
A new exhibit of Hebrew manuscripts at the British Library in London includes plenty of stuff you’d expect: Among other items, it boasts a Hebrew Bible from the 10th century and the earliest known copy of Maimonides’ “Guide to the Perplexed.” But there’s one very surprising artifact at the exhibit, which stateside Judaica aficionados can…
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In an English sea town, a 91-year-old synagogue needs saving
Read this article in Yiddish Francesca Ter-Berg has lived in the coastal English town of Margate for a year and a half. It took her over a year to find the local shul. It was hidden on a backstreet and had been shuttered for years. Soon after discovering it, she learned it was set to…
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The real ‘Mank’ hated Hitler and helped refugees — he was also an isolationist
Holed up at a dusty ranch in Victorville, California, with a full-leg cast, screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz has been self-medicating as he works his way through a draft of “Citizen Kane.” When his secretary, Rita Alexander, learns he’s sneaked booze into the guest residence, she confronts his accomplice, a German nurse. “Frieda, you mustn’t let…
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The ultimate arty and ethical Hanukkah gift guide
By now we all know which of our possessions most enrich our lives — because we’ve been stuck looking at them for nine months. We also wrestle with the albatross of annoying clutter. So, when it comes time to Hanukkah shopping this year, apply this same lens to gift giving. Here are items that are…
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Why the Mona Lisa is a lot more Jewish than you might think
Art mavens have until Dec. 15 to bid on the chance to witness the annual inspection of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa outside of its display case in the Louvre Museum. Mona Lisa mania, as the Louvre calls it, has affected people, including many Jewish fans, ever since the portrait was painted around the year…
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Finding the bright side of a very dark time
It started as a whisper – a breeze gently tickling her ear. The gale got a little stronger. And then, before I knew what had happened, it ripped my feet that, seconds before, had been planted firmly on the ground! I flew in the air, my hair whipping my face. And then, as I opened…
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After the Holocaust, displaced by indifference and paralysis
The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War By David Nasaw Penguin Press, 654 pages, $35 In the aftermath of World War II, Europe was in chaos, with millions homeless and in flight from violence, persecution or retribution for wartime crimes. Some had survived concentration camps; others had been forced laborers…
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The terrifying marriage of convenience between Israel and evangelical Zionists
At an August rally in Wisconsin, Donald Trump ditched the dog whistle of Jewish control and said the quiet part out loud. “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem,” Trump said to cheers at an Oshkosh airport. “That’s for the evangelicals.” Trump then paused and mused on a fact that struck him as curious:…
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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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Culture I come from a long line of Jewish Bundists. Now, Molly Crabapple is part of our family.
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Fast Forward 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from India, the first to make the journey in years
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Yiddish װאָס קען מען זיך אָפּלערנען פֿון מאָלי קראַבעפּלס בוך װעגן „בונד“?What can we learn from Molly Crabapple’s book about the Bund?
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Sports Today’s American Jews finally have their era’s Sandy Koufax