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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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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Tinker, tailor, soldier, philosemite – John le Carré’s strange relationship with Jews
John le Carré, the prolific espionage author and former MI5 spy, died Saturday Dec. 12 at the age of 89. His bibliography of nearly 60 years long outlived its major subject — the Cold War — and expanded to explore geopolitical conflicts that have yet to be resolved. In 1983, he turned his attention to…
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Smokey Robinson stumped about how to say ‘Hanukkah’
Some say the Jews control the entertainment industry. If that’s the case, riddle me this: How could Motown legend Smokey Robinson, a six-decade veteran of major record labels, not know how to pronounce Hanukkah — or even have any idea what it is? We can thank Twitter user Jeff Jacobson for an unforgettable record of…
The Latest
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Is there anything Jewish about Taylor Swift’s new album? Actually, yes.
In this lockdown year, Taylor Swift decided once and for all to shed her upbeat, country-pop-electronic-dance queen musical approach in favor of a sound more befitting trying times. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, she wanted it darker. To help her along with her stylistic transition, Swift engaged the services of producer, songwriter, and musician Aaron Dessner,…
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Sitting Shiva for Spot?
As I peer down at her cotton-puff head, my sense of guilt sets in. Peeps, my bichon frise associate, has just taken a cocktail of three different medicines meant to keep her ticker ticking. Her eyes water, and her mouth turns downward, quivering slightly. It’s obvious she is not digging this new regimen. At 13,…
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How I Learned Shiva
Forty-one years ago this coming week, I walked with sleepless eyes and a weary heart to the front door of my childhood home, where an unexpected visitor had just shown up for my mother’s shiva. If I recall correctly, he was wearing faded jeans, a denim jacket and hippie work boots —his usual outfit —…
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Why that bowl of chicken soup could be deadly — and not just for the chicken
Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet Michael F. Jacobson MIT Press, 296 pages, $26.95 It will not surprise you in the slightest that there’s a white crystal scourge eroding the health and mental wellbeing of the nation. It might however surprise you to know that you, dear reader, almost…
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This Hanukkah, we have become ‘those kinds of Jews’
Dec. 8, 2020. My mother, having done her usual migration to Florida, texts me while I’m walking the dog. “How many are you expecting for Hanukkah?” she asks. I text back even though my sarcasm can’t be heard through my typing: “How many people? It’s 2020, Mom. It’s just us.” And then I think about…
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The secret Jewish history of Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra was a staunch supporter of Israel and wore a mezuzah.
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Louise Glück’s ‘minstrel show’ Nobel speech draws ire
On Dec. 7, newly-minted laureate Louise Glück delivered her Nobel acceptance speech outside of her Massachusetts home. In it, the poet expressed her lifelong interest in a kind of confessional poem, in which the speaker intimately addresses the reader. And in making her point, she lauded a work many found tone-deaf in the current climate,…
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FKA twigs sues former boyfriend Shia LaBeouf for ‘relentless abuse’
The musician FKA twigs has filed a civil lawsuit against Jewish actor Shia LaBeouf citing physical, sexual and emotional abuse during their year-long relationship. The lawsuit details the experience of FKA twigs, born in England as Tahliah Debrett Barnett, and that of another of LaBeouf’s former girlfriends, the stylist Karolyn Pho. It describes LaBeouf’s behavior…
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