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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WATCH NOW: February 4: White supremacy and far-right extremism: Is the Capitol siege the end or the beginning?
Watch the recording here. Watch as Joanna Mendelson, Associate Director, Center on Extremism, ADL; Amy Spitalnick, Executive Director, Integrity First for America; and Eric K. Ward, Executive Director, Western States Center and Senior Fellow, Southern Poverty Law Center explore who are the groups and movements threatening our democracy, how they organized and rose to prominence,…
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A pioneering artist, Nelly Kaplan used Jewishness as her form of rebellion
The French Jewish filmmaker and author Nelly Kaplan, who died on Nov. 12 of COVID-19 complications at age 89, expressed creativity with Yiddishkeit as a form of rebellion. She was born into a prosperous family who had moved to Argentina from Kiev and Odessa to flee Russian anti-Semitism. They had relocated to colonies founded by…
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They set out to find ‘The Meaning of Hitler.’ How did they fail so badly?
Can any one film begin to answer the question of what, exactly, Hitler means? That’s the goal of the new documentary “The Meaning of Hitler,” named for and based on the 1978 Sebastian Haffner book of the same name. From the outset, its ambition proves problematic: Directors Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker chronicle various talking…
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How a Jewish filmmaker wound up eating cake with the pope — an interview with Evgeny Afineevsky
Evgeny Afineevsky celebrated his 48th birthday with a very special person: Pope Francis, the most significant figure in the Catholic world. Afineevsky had just finished filming “Francesco,” a documentary on the pontiff’s teachings. Ahead of its premiere at the Rome Film Festival, Afineevsky brought some friends to a private meeting with the pope, who greeted…
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WATCH NOW: February 2: Meet the Forward 50
Watch the recoding here. Every year we publish the Forward 50, a list of remarkable people who have had a particular impact on our communities. This year, we’re asking them to join our Editor-in-Chief, Jodi Rudoren, for “50 American Jews, 10 conversations,” a weekly series of Zoominars about …whatever is on their minds. The list…
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Playwright Israel Horovitz wrote with Jewish ethics, didn’t always practice them
The playwright Israel Horovitz, who died on Nov. 9 at age 81, proved that creating works redolent with Jewish history and identity can be a matter of adaptation. As Horovitz told The New York Times in March 1986, he grew up in a Massachusetts town with a tiny Jewish population, and felt himself ill-equipped to…
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Is Jon Ossoff’s ‘Star Wars’ fan film better than ‘The Rise of Skywalker?’
A few years ago, in a state runoff far, far away, a Republican Super PAC used Jon Ossoff’s collegiate a cappella “Star Wars” fan film in a ludicrous attack ad. During Ossoff’s 2017 bid to represent Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, the Congressional Leadership Fund uncovered footage of the current candidate for U.S. Senate cosplaying as…
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Alton Brown makes an Auschwitz joke — then apologizes
Last night, Food Network host Alton Brown — a lifelong conservative but a Biden voter this time around — tossed a query out to the internet about the future dress code of America: “Do you think the camp uniforms will be striped, like the ones at Auschwitz or will plaid be in vogue?” What the…
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Alec Baldwin departs WNYC in defense of Woody Allen
After hosting his talk show “Here’s the Thing” on WNYC since 2011, actor and comedian Alec Baldwin is decamping to iHeartRadio — because of Woody Allen. The shift is Baldwin’s latest demonstration of loyalty to Allen, his longtime friend, whose directorial career has in recent years been overshadowed by allegations of sexual abuse by his…
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Alexander Vindman and his twin share their story of service
In a Veterans Day message, Lt. Col Alexander Vindman and his twin brother, Lt. Col Yevgeny Vindman, told their story on behalf of all refugees, military and civilian. In the video for HIAS, the 139-year-old Jewish nonprofit that aids refugees from around the world, the brothers, who were smeared as disloyal by the Trump administration,…
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WATCH NOW: January 27: Meet the Forward 50 with Rabbi Sandra Lawson & Rabbi Dan Fink
Watch the recording here. Every year we publish the Forward 50, a list of remarkable people who have had a particular impact on our communities. This year, we’re asking them to join our Editor-in-Chief, Jodi Rudoren, for “50 American Jews, 10 conversations,” a weekly series of Zoominars about …whatever is on their minds. The list…
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News ‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto
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Sports An op-ed compared an NBA team to Israel as underdog success stories. Then the threats poured in.
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Music For Bob Dylan’s 85th birthday, an 85-minute playlist
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News Mamdani’s first Jewish Heritage event reveals a narrowed circle
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Film & TV Woody Allen’s biggest fans were easy marks for a fake monologue about antisemitism
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Fast Forward U.S. launches attacks on Iran as negotiations over a peace deal drag out
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Fast Forward A stronger shekel has become a pressing problem for Americans building lives in Israel
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Culture Garry Trudeau was a prep school kid from New England, but he identified with the Jewish outsider in ‘Doonesbury’