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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The unexpected joys of watching ‘Uncut Gems’ on Netflix
I first met Howard Ratner at a sold-out afternoon showing at the Lincoln Square AMC — back when going to the movies was a thing. The theater was a vivid cross-section of New York life — old gay couples, Modern Orthodox college kids in kippot, young black and Latinx urban professionals. By pinning down Adam…
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This is the only cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” we need right now
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” began its life, in 1984’s “Various Positions,” as a profoundly weird song with gospel choir accompaniment, a painfully-of-its-era drum machine and a stentorian and unemotive delivery from the poet himself. But you don’t really care for that music, do you? For many, the template for all covers of Cohen’s initially unremarked ballad…
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Freedom for me is freedom from you — a poem
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Victoria Y.T. Nealey, a 13-year-old student at the Brandeis School of San Francisco. You can find more work from our young writers here WHAT IT MEANS TO BE FREE you you are the…
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Freedom is fighting for change
On a sunny Saturday in September 2018, I put on some makeup, changed into the new outfit I’d bought, and headed into New York City with my friends to go to the Global Citizen music festival. We’d been waiting for the festival for weeks, a chance to celebrate our first month of 10th grade with…
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From Minsk to America, freedom remains elusive
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Josh Elkin, a 16-year-old student from the High School of Health Sciences in Wales, Wisconsin. You can find more work from our young writers here. In 1980, a Jewish couple in Minsk makes…
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Freedom is summer at camp
Here’s how the day typically goes: I wake up and sprint out of bed, which is unusual for me. I then rush through breakfast. My stomach is in knots. I have very little appetite. It’s late June or early July. Most of the time, there’s a heat wave and the air is as thick as…
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Will a Saudi TV show change how Jews are seen in the Middle East?
It’s nighttime and there’s a festive gathering happening within a mud-walled home in a Kuwaiti village. But when a radio report announces the establishment of the state of Israel, the dancing and gregarious discussions quickly come to a halt. The year is 1948 and the scene is from the Ramadan series “Um Haroun” or “Mother…
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Rolf Hochhuth, playwright who challenged the Vatican’s WWII legacy, dies at 89
Rolf Hochhuth, the controversial German dramatist whose play “The Deputy” sparked protests and ignited an ongoing reappraisal of Pope Pius XII’s World War II-era legacy, died May 13 at his home in Berlin. He was 89 years old. In the 1950s, Hochhuth began studying the history of the Third Reich, which had risen to power…
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The Jewiest (and least Jewish) Muppets
Some Muppets don’t even have lower bodies. But they might all have faith traditions. Last night, Twitter’s favorite rabbi, Danya Ruttenberg, invited the internet to speculate on the religious affiliations of every Muppet ever. Ok, let’s do this. Religious affiliation of every single Muppet. I’ll start. Statler and Waldorf are Jews, obviously, as is Fozzie…
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Trump likes Henry Ford’s “bloodline.” So did Charles Lindbergh
There are a lot of things Donald Trump could praise the Ford Motor Company for. At its inception, the automobile manufacturer made cars accessible and reduced the strain on laborers through the assembly line process, and, just recently, the corporation began producing ventilators and face shields to support hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic. That last…
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To be free is to be open to new possibilities
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Emily Hyett, a ten-year-old student from North Hampton, New Hampshire. You can find more work from our young writers here. What is freedom? Is it a young child biking down the streets of…
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