Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Why I’ll always be grateful to Bruce Jay Friedman
A few years ago I called Bruce Jay Friedman to thank him for helping give shape to my life. He quickly brushed aside my thanks, and a little less quickly declined my invitation for lunch. He’d been ailing for a while, and wasn’t getting out of his apartment much. But he was firm about continuing…
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A 90-year-old Minneapolis artist lost it all in a protest fire — he’s ready to start over
On May 30, Aribert Munzner’s art studio in South Minneapolis caught fire and was doused with 1,000 gallons of water. Protesters responding to the death of George Floyd burned a bar across the street and the wind picked up embers that landed on the Civil War-era Ivy Arts Building’s wooden roof. The fire department quickly…
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In ‘Chained’ a power-mad cop loses control of his family
Love can be tough, and tougher still to watch. In Yaron Shani’s “Chained,” we witness, from suffocating angles, how one man’s intense brand of caring and need for control destroys his world. The film, which is streaming online as part of the Manhattan JCC’s virtual Israel Film Center Festival June 10 and 11, is the…
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Congressional Endorsements by Israel PACs
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How about a second season of ‘Unorthodox’ to cure the ills of the first?
The response to the Netflix hit show “Unorthodox” has been huge. Breaking expectations and hitting the Netflix top ten list in such unlikely locations as Saudi Arabia, the show has been the entry point for many viewers to learn about the Hasidic community. However, as the show has become the de facto spokesperson for Judaism,…
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WATCH NOW July 8: An exit interview with Amb. Dani Dayan
Watch the recording here. Ambassador Dayan is heading home after four years as Israel’s Consul General in the New York area. What has he learned about American Jewry and our relationship with the Jewish state? How has the experience changed his understanding of U.S. politics — and Israel’s? Join Jodi Rudoren and Andrew Silow-Carroll, editors-in-chief…
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Books Is there any good time to publish a book during a pandemic?
“Timing is everything.” Larry Cohler-Esses wrote that line in 1995 in a Forward news story about my book contract with Simon and Schuster. I was the American Jewish Committee’s expert on antisemitism at the time. I had written a report on the militia movement ten days before the Oklahoma City bombing predicting attacks on government…
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Why Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Kaddish’ is the perfect poem for these times
In this spring of fear and torment, COVID Spring, a spring when we mourn our dead, Jews are saying Kaddish too many times. When I grew up in a casually Jewish household we lit yahrzeit candles, and nothing focused my thoughts on the passing of all things like the familiar melody of Kaddish, As I…
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WATCH NOW June 30: A Jewish conversation for Pride Month: How far we’ve come, and what happens next?
Watch here. Fifty years after the first Pride march, this year’s celebration is different. Social-distancing has canceled many parades, and celebrations are mainly online. The Supreme Court just ruled that LGBTQ people are protected from employment discrimination. And the issue of inclusion has perhaps never been a higher priority in Jewish circles. On June’s last…
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Should we really keep comparing Trump to Hitler?
Yesterday, a few hundred feet from the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump’s Justice Department stage-managed a show of force against his own citizens. Today, the president is being compared to Adolf Hitler — again. Before curfew went into effect at 7 p.m. on Monday, peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square were met with police in…
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For Jews, curfews bring eerie reminders of Medieval and Holocaust eras
As cities across America contend with nightly curfews, many of us are likely unaware that the word “curfew” originates in medieval French and has resonances that run through centuries of Jewish history. The latest news can seem increasingly medieval — from plague to authoritarianism to the public murder of minorities — and the sudden ubiquity…
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News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
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News A Jewish farmer drove 600 miles to rescue a century-old synagogue. Now he’s building a new one in a cornfield.
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Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
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Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
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Culture That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
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Opinion Were the attacks in Boulder and D.C. the product of ‘blood libel’? Not so fast
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News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
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Culture In the Trump-Musk feud, both sides are united by antisemitism
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