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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The wonderful, horrible afterlife of Leni Riefenstahl
It’s the weekend, and you’re looking for something to watch with your family. Maybe, to broaden your horizons, something directed by a woman. So you look up the best female filmmakers of all time. The same names appear on every list: Agnés Varda, Lois Weber, Sofia Coppola, Clair Denis. And Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl, who died…
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Film & TV A cult Israeli rock opera seeks cult movie success
Anti-war messages, as much electric guitar riffs, are a common theme of rock musicals from “Hair” to “American Idiot.” It’s no surprise that Israel has a peacenik rock opera, too, but you may find yourself bewildered by what it has to say. Keren Yedaya’s “Red Fields” (2019), which opens the New York Sephardic Film Festival…
The Latest
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The curator of the Polish Jewish museum wins $500k award – here’s her story
In late January, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett received a call from an unfamiliar Israeli number. It was the president of Tel Aviv University, informing her she had received an award of half a million dollars. “It’s like a TV show when they call you completely out of the blue,” said Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator…
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About that Pete Buttigieg Bernie Sanders essay…
WRITER’S NOTE: During a February 2020 Democratic debate in Nevada, NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Mayor Pete Buttigieg about a 2000 essay he wrote in praise of Bernie Sanders. “The qualities I admired then are qualities I still respect a great deal,” Buttigieg responded. “I never said that I agree with every part of his policy…
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‘West Side Story’ is opening on Broadway. She’s 17, and leading protests against it.
Ivo van Hove’s Broadway revival of “West Side Story,” a risky reinvention of one of the 20th century’s most beloved musicals, was always supposed to make headlines. But in the final weeks of previews, as a small but committed group of protestors staged ongoing protests outside the theater, an unplanned story began to take hold….
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Why Theodor Herzl still matters
Theodor Herzl did not live to see Israel realized, but he is arguably the country’s most enduring visionary. In less than a decade, before his early death in 1904, at the age of 44, Herzl lifted the Zionist movement from obscurity to a palpable political force through his magnetism and dedication. Many Israelis and Zionists…
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From the heart of Israel, a voice for Iranians
In the early hours of January 3rd, the journalist Menashe Amir had been sleeping when a colleague woke him up with explosive news: an American drone had fired on the Baghdad airport, killing Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani. Amir, who is 80, rushed out of bed and into his home office in Har Adar, an Israeli…
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It’s Nazis vs. Nazi hunters in Amazon’s comic book revenge fantasy
The opening credits of Amazon’s “Hunters,” a new series about a crew of Nazi-killing avengers in late 1970s New York, unfold over the backdrop of a chess board. The game’s hand-painted pieces take on the shape of the central players — a bloodied young man with a knife, a black woman with an afro and…
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At 99, a survivor tells his daring tale of heroism
The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground By Justus Rosenberg William Morrow, 288 pages, $28.99 In 1937, with Nazi violence disrupting Jewish life in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), Justus Rosenberg’s parents sent him to Paris to pursue his studies. He was just 16, and it would be 15 years before he…
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Poland’s Jewish Museum director is stepping aside — why now?
“It’s been almost a year since I left the museum, actually,” said Professor Dariusz Stola. “I waited quite patiently, I must say.” Stola was formerly the director of POLIN, Poland’s Jewish museum in Warsaw, until February 2019, when his five-year contract ended. For a year, he took no other job, hoping that he would be…
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A museum devoted to Southern Jewish culture to open in fall of 2020
For 26 years, the only museum devoted to Jewish life throughout the American South operated on the grounds of a Reform summer camp in Utica, Miss. Since opening its doors in 1986, the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience was a hub for Southern Jews looking to get in touch with their region’s vibrant past…
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News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaida in address to Republican officials
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Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
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Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
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Film & TV In a film from Israel, three characters in search of a love language
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Fast Forward All San Diego Jewish organizations pull out of Pride festival over Kehlani performance, citing ‘serious safety concerns’
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Fast Forward Dave Portnoy on his tirades against ‘F— the Jews’ bar patron: ‘I don’t know if it did any good’
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Fast Forward Harvard Divinity School appoints professor who has criticized Zionism to new Jewish studies role
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