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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12 clips to remember Carl Reiner by
Carl Reiner had good reason to disdain bananas. Though he had a 70-year career in film and television, he was regularly referred to in his early appearances as Sid Caesar’s “second banana.” When he sat down with Mel Brooks’ 2,000-year-old man, one critic noted that he had risen to the level of “second-banana supreme.” Yet…
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Why we shouldn’t be quoting H.L. Mencken
It was simultaneously surprising and ironic to read a quote from the notoriously anti-Semitic H.L. Mencken in your July 28 article about anti-Semitism. Mencken infamously wrote the following in his 1930 “Treatise on the Gods,” one of his best known books: “The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever…
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Carl Reiner, ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ creator and Mel Brooks’ other half, dies at 98
Carl Reiner, the Mark Twain Prize-winning writer, actor and director whose sharp and open-hearted voice shaped over 50 years of comedy, has died at 98. According to his son the filmmaker Rob Reiner, he passed away on the evening of June 29. Reiner, best known for creating and acting in “The Dick Van Dyke Show,”…
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Why Carl Reiner was the dreamiest boss I ever had
“My secretaries stay a long time,” Carl Reiner said as he greeted me at the start of the job interview, “so I don’t know what I’m supposed to ask.” Okay, I was plotzing to get the job. Though at 26 I’d worked in show business long enough to know that celebrities were often nothing like…
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Remembering Jean Daniel — a journalist of unshakeable distinction and integrity
Jean Daniel, who died in February at age 99, was born Jean Daniel Bensaïd to a Jewish family in Blida, northern Algeria. He spent his long life analyzing his feelings of Jewish identity in memoirs, while also producing a mountain of political commentary as founder and executive editor of Le Nouvel Observateur. It is perhaps…
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Music Bob Dylan becomes oldest artist in UK with a #1 album of new songs
Paul Simon once lamented the fact he always seemed to come in second to Bob Dylan. “I don’t like coming in second,” Simon told Rolling Stone in 2011. Yet, there are some titles where getting second place is not quite so bad. Among them: oldest artist to reach #1 on the UK charts with an…
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Why Sacha Baron Cohen is the anti-Zuckerberg
On Saturday June 27 in Olympia, Wash., Sacha Baron Cohen appeared incognito at a right-wing rally, leading the crowd in a chorus of gleeful murderous intent. In a false beard and overstuffed overalls, the “Who Is America” comic welcomed rallygoers at the pro-gun “March For Our Rights” event to inject such “liberal” targets as CNN,…
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Amid battle over St. Louis’s name, Archdiocese defends saint who persecuted Jews, Muslims
Weeks after activists in St. Louis, Missouri began calling for the city to tear down the most notable statue of its namesake — and rename itself — the local Archdiocese has come out in defense of the embattled 13th-century saint. King Louis IX, the only French king ever to be canonized, routinely persecuted French Jews…
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Of course Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner support Black Lives Matter
Anti-racism isn’t just a young person’s game. In a photo that appears to have been taken during Mel Brooks’ 94th birthday celebration on June 28, the director and his lifelong friend, collaborator and dinner companion Carl Reiner and Reiner’s daughter Annie were seen sporting Black Lives Matter t-shirts. MY HEROS CARL REINER ANNIE REINER &…
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John Wayne certainly had a racist history — does he have a Jewish one?
On the morning of Monday, June 29, 2020, President Donald J. Trump tweeted, “Can anyone believe that Princeton just dropped the name of Woodrow Wilson from their highly respected policy center. Now the Do Nothing Democrats want to take off the name John Wayne from an airport. Incredible stupidity!” It’s no surprise that Trump would…
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Books An Israeli-American author’s debut brings the road trip novel back to life
There may be no better way of handling a death in the family, at least in the American imagination, than hopping in the car and driving somewhere — anywhere. A road trip, especially to some meaningful destination, can be a gesture of respect for the mourned or a step towards renewal for the mourner. It’s…
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