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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In this shattering film, the faustian allure of Nazism
When you study the long, infuriating, and infuriatingly long careers of the Third Reich’s major creative figures, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the public doesn’t give a shit about art. The propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl were invaluable weapons for the Nazi Party of the 1930s, but after the war she was…
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In Amsterdam, borne back ceaselessly into a Jewish past
House on Endless Waters By Emuna Elon; translated from Hebrew by Anthony Berris and Linda Yechiel Atria Books, 320 pages, $27 The plot of Emuna Elon’s lovely novel – about history, fiction and the importance of family ties — begins with a broken promise: The prominent Israeli novelist Yoel Blum has agreed to return to…
The Latest
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How Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott identified with the Jews
Editor’s Note: Derek Walcott would have turned 90 today. In honor of this date, we’re revisiting this essay written on the occasion of the poet’s death on March 17, 2017. Derek Walcott, the Nobel Prize-winning poet from the West Indies who died March 17 at age 87, was long inspired by Jewish culture, history and…
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50 years later, ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Continis’ is a Holocaust film like no other
On a summer day in the northern Italian city of Ferrara, a band of youths, dressed in immaculate white, arrive at the walled gates of a garden, open to the public for the first time in a decade. They are there at the invitation of the young lady of the manor for a tennis tournament….
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Watch: Peter Beinart, Jodi Rudoren chat Israel, 2020 elections
Join Forward editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren in conversation about Israel with Peter Beinart, CUNY professor, editor at large for Jewish Currents, contributor to The Atlantic and author of “The Crisis of Zionism”. Their discussion, “Is Peace Possible?,” will take place on February 9 at 5 p.m. at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. To find out…
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Jeff Goldblum, Marc Maron and Terry Gross find their roots
Two celebrated interviewers and perhaps the most eccentric interview subject of all time, learned about their shared Jewish pasts in Eastern Europe on PBS’s “Finding Your Roots.” On the January 21 episode of the series, podcaster and comedian Marc Maron, “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross and actor Jeff Goldblum found common ground: Namely, the Eastern…
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Yes, exclusion of women in Jewish Studies is still a problem
To The Editor: The Forward recently published an article by Marcin Wodzinski that was framed as a response to an article we wrote for the Forward more than a year ago about women’s underrepresentation in our field of Jewish Studies. Our original article expressed profound concern that a new 850-page history of Hasidism had no…
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Art Did Walter Benjamin understand his prize possession — Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus?
Of all the icons to emerge from the left-wing politics of the last century, it is among the most talked about and the least looked at, the most mystical and the most frightening. It is probably the unlikeliest and also, by a country mile, the weirdest. Its caretakers make up the most exclusive club in…
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Oy — Why those ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ ads are pretty, pretty bad
It’s only right that they be dissected
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This Jewish family was nominated for more Oscars than any other
There is no name in film music that carries as much cachet as “Newman.” I can prove it: you probably don’t know which Newman I’m talking about. While John Williams has an impressive 52 Oscar nominations, the Newman family, collectively, have 95. Here are more numbers. This year alone, two Newmans, cousins Thomas and Randy,…
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Pot Roast Then & Now: A spicy tale of Jewish mothers and daughters
What can a Jewish cookbook from 1946 tell us about the 21st-century Jewish-American experience? Liza Schoenfein, the Forward’s senior food writer, and Jane Ziegelman, a culinary historian, took our signature collection of Yiddish recipes off the shelf and found a direct line from the balaboostas of yore to the kitchens of today. How Home Economics…
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Yiddish World How my grandparents met: a Yiddish-American romance
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Yiddish אַ טור פֿון דער אויסשטעלונג „מגילת־אסתּר אין דער רעמבראַנדט־תּקופֿה“ — אויף ייִדיש!A tour of “The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” exhibit — in Yiddish!
אין דער אויסשטעלונג געפֿינען זיך 120 מאָלערײַען פֿון דער פּורים־העלדין, געמאָלט פֿון די האָלענדישע קונסטמײַסטערס.
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Fast Forward NYC Mayor Adams pushes controversial antisemitism definition as issue dominates mayoral election
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Opinion If Trump is being compared to Hitler, who was Hitler before he was Hitler?
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