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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‘May I help you, Mr. Perlman?’ — a lesson from the maestro at the Zabar’s lox counter
So, I was slicing away. I looked up and sitting before me was Itzhak Perlman. Mr. Perlman is a regular at Zabar’s — you know, like Woody Allen’s mother. He’s been shopping here for years. He is held in such high esteem that the store manager assigns one of the sub-managers to walk around the…
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‘Hollywood’ imagines inclusion, but snubs films about Jews
Ryan Murphy’s “Hollywood” presents a gauzy Tinsel Town where anything was possible. In it, the movie-making mecca of the postwar period supplied a panacea for all America’s ills, counting major blows against racism, homophobia and gender inequality in one, monumental evening at the Academy Awards. Hays Code be damned! Forget the trending hashtag of #OscarsSoWhite…
The Latest
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Music Barbra Streisand urges relief for essential workers — through song
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” is having a moment, but Barbra Streisand is eternal. In a new video posted to her YouTube channel, the singer, known for her exceedingly rare live vocal performances, used the song to laud those working through the coronavirus pandemic. While the video, with its images of healthcare workers, grocery store cashiers…
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WATCH NOW: Talking Shavuot with Ben Katchor, author of The Dairy Restaurant
Watch the recording here. You can’t eat at dairy restaurants for Shavuot, but you can hear all about them. Join MacArthur Fellow and author Ben Katchor as he discusses the holiday and his critically-acclaimed new book, The Dairy Restaurant, with Rob Eshman, national editor of The Forward. This is part of our new series, “#ForwardFocus:…
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What all the critics of “Unorthodox” are forgetting
“Unorthodox” is, if anything, entirely orthodox. That is to say, the much-viewed and reviewed Netflix offering about a young woman who flees her insular hasidic community follows the typical convention of a number of books and documentaries portraying the ostensibly suffocating lives of hasidim and the quest of some of the braver souls among them…
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In “Unorthodox” and “One of Us,” a balancing act of hope and despair
The top question I’ve been getting for the past month is “What do you think of ‘Unorthodox’?” As Executive Director of Footsteps for a decade I’ve seen over a thousand new members come through our doors, and watched a community of people leaving ultra-Orthodoxy blossom into a global movement. “Unorthodox” is beautifully done, and it…
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WATCH NOW: The Future of the Jewish People…and Cocktails
Watch here. Join Jay Sanderson, President & CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and Rob Eshman, National Editor of The Forward, for cooking, cocktails and discussion. Both foodies will make a sensational Shavuot dish and special dairy-based cocktail while talking food, the Jewish response to Covid-19, and the post-Covid Jewish future. This…
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A recently uncovered letter explains why ‘anti-Semitism’ wasn’t in the first Oxford English Dictionary
On July 5, 1900, James Murray, founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, penned a letter to Claude Montefiore explaining a conspicuous absence in an upcoming volume compiled some years before: An entry for the word “anti-Semitism.” The oldest hatred did appear in the first edition, but only within a list of “anti” combinations. In…
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WATCH: 300 musicians perform ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ to lift socially-distanced spirits
The key to the success of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II lies in how well their music works outside of its original context. It’s easy to forget — or to not even not know — the South Pacific setting of “Some Enchanted Evening” or to adapt “My Favorite Things” into a Christmas song or…
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Your questions about “Unorthodox” and leaving Hasidic communities, answered
More than 2,000 of you joined our virtual conversation last week titled “Unorthodox: Reality vs. Fiction.” Alexa Karolinski, one of the creators of the blockbuster Netflix hit, was joined by our Yiddish editor, Rukhl Schaechter, and three people who, like the four-part series’ title character, Esty, had left Haredi communities: Chavie Weisberger of Footsteps, a…
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Your guide to everything Jewish about ‘Star Wars’
The temporally distant and far-flung galaxy of “Star Wars” is, like the Torah, a text touched by many hands over the years. While creator George Lucas’ initial narrative impulse — relying on dull arcana like the “Journal of the Whills” — was Midrashic, the many Jews who worked on the script, and eventually assumed the…
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