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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Why the Ayn Rand Institute getting a federal handout is the Rand-iest thing ever
What does Ayn Rand do when a global pandemic strikes? Does she use the impressive torque of her sterling bootstraps to vault over adversity? Does she seize the moment of a supine economy to make her own happiness and fortune — likely with locomotives — at the expense of all others? We’ll never know. Though…
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How Jewish themes inspired Ennio Morricone
The Oscar-winning Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who died on July 6 at age 91, is cherished by film fans for his scores to Spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone as well as Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” (2015), for which he received an Academy Award. Yet as Morricone sometimes pointed out to journalists, his artistry…
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Why Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001’ is the ultimate golem story
News that one of the iconic spacesuits from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is going up for auction, gives us occasion to explore the link between the myth of the golem and Kubrick’s legendary science fiction film. The suit was made by the company P. Frankenstein & Sons Ltd. in Manchester, England, and the…
The Latest
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NBC’s Jacob Soboroff on the ongoing crisis of family separation
Jacob Soboroff was among the first American civilians to witness what family separation looked like. By the time the NBC and MSNBC correspondent arrived at the Casa Padre center in Brownsville, Tex. in June 2018, the policy had already affected thousands of migrants. “Going to a former Walmart that’s 250,000 square feet and seeing 1,500…
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McCarthy was anti-Communist. Was he also anti-Semitic?
Was the anti-Communist Senator Joe McCarthy also an anti-Semite? That question assumes new resonance in this era of spiraling xenophobia. And there’s fresh evidence in the Wisconsin lawmaker’s personal and professional papers, which I was the first person to gain access to as part of researching my book, “Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of…
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What Trump’s “Garden of American Heroes” says about his America — and the way other countries handle their history
Standing before the graven images of four American presidents on Friday July 3, Donald Trump announced the establishment of a “National Garden of American Heroes,” an offer of further idolatry that left historians puzzled by its strange assortment of figures. At first glance, the American icons pegged for statuary treatment in the executive order declaring…
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The Forward wins big at the 2020 Rockowers
The 39th Annual Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism, held virtually on July 3, recognized a broad swath of the Forward’s coverage, from the strange saga of a thrift store Torah to the swan song of the paper’s print edition to the infectious tunes of Hanukkah a capella. Forverts staff writer Jordan Kutzik…
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Kibbitzing with Carl Reiner at the urinal
I escaped The Bronx in the summer 1981 for a vacation that lasted seven years. I took a bus to Berkeley to visit my West Coast cousins and, once there, decided to extend my planned three-week vacation. I started bar-tending the last, last call at La Barca in San Francisco — located on Lombard and…
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In a horror master’s rare TB films, warnings for a future pandemic
Edgar Ulmer, the prolific and peripatetic film director, best known for his 1945 noir, “Detour,” spent much of his career as an exile — first from Europe and then from Hollywood. He directed Yiddish classics, such as “American Matchmaker” and “Green Fields.” In the early part of his career, he worked with F.W. Murnau, Billy…
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A look back at Beavis and Butt-Head’s best music video commentaries
Beavis and Butt-Head, those eternally immature adolescents, are returning right when we need them most — this time on Comedy Central. It’s good news, but this fan counts himself hesitant. The reboot is said to be a re-imagining of the franchise, and I’m comfortable knowing show creator Mike Judge is behind the project. But I…
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Did the Trump campaign really slap a Nazi eagle on a t-shirt?
As wrongheaded as they were in vying to keep the U.S. out of World War II, the America First Committee took great pains to avoid fetishizing fascism. While the group certainly attracted its share of anti-Semites and German American Bundists, its trick was to appear as American as apple pie when courting isolationists. That meant…
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