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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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Why Christo didn’t matter — and why that matters
Christo, who passed away last month at the age of 84, had a lot in common with some other famous one-namers. Like Ozymandias, he’s remembered for building big, eye-catching things that don’t exist anymore. Like Cher, he was around for most of the back half of the 20th century and a good chunk of 21st,…
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Why Jews loved Charles Dickens — and even Fagin
When Sholem Aleichem’s stories were translated into Russian, renowned critic Alexander Amfiteatrov likened him to Charles Dickens. The great Yiddish writer balked at the comparison. “He imagines that our literature has the amplitude of English literature and can produce a Dickens!” Sholem Aleichem wrote to his son-in-law, Y.D. Berkowitz. “Were Amfiteatrov to spend even a…
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His ads changed how Jews were perceived — do they still matter?
Advertising is a form of history. That’s the overwhelming thought you get when you listen to the legendary Gary Wexler discuss his 20 years of arresting, moving, and often simply heart-stopping advertisements about Jewish community and identity that will now be an archive at the National Library of Israel. While Jewish history is often told…
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What was Jewish about Jimmy Durante? More than you might think.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of the entertainer Jimmy Durante (1893-1980), whose artistry was linked with Yiddishkeit. Durante’s nickname, Schnozzola, is an American adaptation of the Yiddish slang term schnoz for nose. An able jazz pianist and endearing comedian, Durante was also capable of poignant singing. When he performed the German…
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Meet the winners of The Forward’s Young Writers Contest
Can we talk about something good for a change? As headlines bombard us with stories of violence and curfews set against the backdrop of an epidemic, it’s easy to lose hope. Which is why it’s been so refreshing to step away from the unrelenting daily news cycle and read the work of young writers whose…
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Your top 9 Yiddish antifa anthems: a revolutionary playlist
The Yiddish roots of antifa – the anti-fascist movement whose precursors date back at least as far as opposition to the Russian czar – have been well documented. They are also enshrined in a canon of Yiddish antifa songs – songs of resistance, anarchism, revolution, and workers’ rights – that listeners might find eerily resonant…
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What Trump (and Masha Gessen) can teach us about autocracy
Surviving Autocracy By Masha Gessen Riverhead Books, 270 pages, $26 Everything seems to move more quickly these days, including publishing. The epilogue of Masha Gessen’s “Surviving Autocracy,” a polemic urging resistance to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian inclinations, is dated April 2020. It’s topical enough to reference both the COVID-19 crisis and the administration’s “disastrous” response….
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Trump’s church photo has no American precedent. Does it have one in fascism?
It was the photo op that transfixed the nation. Early Monday evening, President Trump, accompanied by a small cadre of staff and press, marched from the White House through Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal church, where every president since James Madison has attended services. He had just given a speech threatening to use the…
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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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In Case You Missed It
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Opinion Right-wing insurrectionists tried to topple the German government in 1920 — it’s happening again in Trump’s America
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Theater Can a kinky new Yiddish musical resurrect a lost art — and one man who got spanked to death?
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Fast Forward Josh Shapiro’s Judaism was not why Kamala Harris snubbed him, new book claims
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Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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