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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Daily distraction: Make this Passover a celebration
Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing. Happy Passover. For many of us, it’s going to be a weird one. As we’ve…
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Reading Wordsworth in quarantine
At the tail end of my first year out of college, my then-boyfriend and I had a serious conversation about where we wanted to move. We’d stayed in St. Louis after graduating, but it was time to go. I wanted New York. He wanted San Francisco. We sat face-to-face on my bed, in my sweet…
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6 backgrounds to use for your Zoom Seder — and more!
Why is this Passover different from all other Passovers? Only a simple child would ask such a question, but one answer is that so many of us far from home will be connecting with family via Zoom. But, while social distancing Seders may be a sad symptom of the times, they do come with at…
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A seder in Siberia
Read this story in Yiddish It was the only time in my life when everyone at the Passover table was thinking only about the Haggadah, not the matzo balls — perhaps because there wasn’t a whiff of a matzo ball to be found. That year in Siberia, spring arrived a few weeks earlier than expected….
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Daily distraction: Put on a play at home!
Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing. There’s no way around it — this is going to be a very tough week, which…
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Passover in the time of the plague
My daughter just saw her first rainbow. We stood between the sun and the drizzle and I pronounced the words of the blessing: “Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, King of the universe, who remembers the covenant, and is faithful to His covenant, and keeps His promise.” I’d always been puzzled by the language —…
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Ravi Shankar at 100: Jewish mentor, sitar master
April 7 marks the centenary of the Indian Sitar Master Ravi Shankar (1920– 2012), whose interactions with Western musicians, such as the Beatle George Harrison, have been celebrated, although the full extent to which Jewish musicians were part of Shankar’s influential career remains relatively little known. In 1950s middlebrow American Jewish culture, Shankar was already…
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In the time of coronavirus, the world looks to Anne Frank
On Sunday March 22, as New York State marked nearly 17,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, Anne Frank’s picture appeared on a Manhattan courthouse. BREAKING: Tonight, Never Again Action showed up at New York’s immigration courthouse, to demand that @NYGovCuomo use his emergency powers and influence to ensure the release of ICE detainees from New York’s…
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Daily distraction: Livestream a McNally play, watch ‘The Wire,’ make something!
Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing. I wonder what your new routine is like. To give you a peek behind the…
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Why seders could be more meaningful this year
In a normal year, right about now, Jews worldwide would be boarding planes and finalizing plans to host our extended families and friends for Passover seders where we come together to retell the biblical story of our ancestors’ exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom. In the era of COVID-19, however, such gatherings are a…
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The curious incident of the pig in the Haggadah
Every Passover season, new haggadahs appear, each one reflecting something about the specific time and place it was created and the audience it tries to reach (think of the “Hogwarts Haggadah” or this year’s “Human Rights Haggadah”). In many of these, pictures illustrate or expand on the texts. This practice reaches back to the 13th…
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