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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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December 6: Manhattan: Conversation With A.G. Sulzberger And Jodi Rudoren
Don’t miss The Forward’s editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren and A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, in conversation with Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue on “The Role of Journalism in a Fast-Changing World.” The event is Friday, December 6 at 7:15 p.m., immediately following services at the synagogue, on 87th Street in Manhattan….
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Art All Roads Lead Back To Käthe Kollwitz
This is the third in a four-part series of stories about the work of Käthe Kollwitz and how it influenced artists, activists and collectors like Dr. Richard Simms, part of whose collection is being exhibited by the Getty Center in Los Angeles. You may find the previous articles here and here. In 1971, as America…
The Latest
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The Nine Lives of Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher, A Life on the Edge By Sheila Weller Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 386 pp. $28 She was a Hollywood daughter, ingénue, actress, muse, novelist, screenwriter, script doctor, comedienne and eloquently funny spokesperson on behalf of bipolar disorder. That’s just nine of the lives of Carrie Fisher that Sheila Weller unpacks in her sympathetic,…
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Remembering The Ultimate Jewish Polymath — Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Wolfe Miller, the English Jewish author, stage director, and medical doctor, who died on November 27 at age 85, proved that issues of identity can transcend conscious denials. During youthful appearances in the influential satirical review “Beyond the Fringe,” Miller played a character who announced: “I’m not really a Jew, you know, just Jew-ish.”…
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The First Yiddish Play Staged In America Gets A Timely Encore
When Boris Thomashefsky arrived in New York Harbor in 1881, before the Statue of Liberty — and before Ellis Island – he carried with him the spirit of a born performer. But he had not yet found an outlet for his talents; neither, for that matter, had America. Within a year of his immigration, things…
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Mahmoud Abbas Plans To Reprint An Iraqi-Israeli Jew’s Tale Of Displacement
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he wants Arab leaders to know about the historical plight of Arab Jewry. To educate them, he’s reviving a forgotten piece of the Israeli Arab canon — though it’s likely a text he misread. On November 16, at his headquarters in Ramallah, Abbas met with members of the late…
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Adam Sandler Speaks! Some New Jewish Facts About The Comedy Legend
In his first magazine profile since 1996, Adam Sandler, primed to debut an intense and morally itchy performance as diamond dealer Howard Ratner in the Safdie Brothers’s “Uncut Gems,” appears menschy and family-oriented. The November 27 write-up by The New York Times’s Jamie Lauren Keiles is also, unsurprisingly, an insanely Jewish affair. It begins at…
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ScarJo Regrets Casting Controversy, But Won’t Apologize For Backing Woody Allen
Responding to her continued and controversial defense of Woody Allen, Scarlett Johansson has stated that she will not censor her personal opinions in the interest of optics. In a November 26 Vanity Fair profile, journalist Chris Heath asked Johansson about widespread criticism of her stated belief in Allen’s innocence in the case of his daughter…
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Deborah Levy And More Crack NYT 100 Notable Books Of 2019
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel, Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s account of their Pulitzer-winning reporting on Harvey Weinstein and a collection of stories by Peter Orner are among The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2019. Brodesser-Akner’s “Fleishman Is in Trouble” is one of a number of significant works of fiction on the list, including…
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A Brief Guide To Martin Scorsese’s Jewish And ‘Jew-ish’ Films
Martin Scorsese, the Little Italy-raised, second-generation son of Italian-American garment workers, was born into the piping-hot melting pot he spent a lifetime committing to film. His awareness of America, while observed from a particular — often extralegal — vantage point, is supreme even among his impressive cohort of auteurs: Spielberg, Coppola and De Palma. Naturally,…
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Music The Spiritual Beauty Of Jimi Hendrix’s Star-Spangled Banner
I was a fifteen-year-old, not-very-hip teenager during the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, which I did not attend. I did watch the movie, though, soon afterwards, and when the fiftieth anniversary rolled around this August, I watched it again. This time, as the High Holy Days approached, I was particularly struck by the festival’s final…
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