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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On the northwest side of Chicago, my old Jewish neighborhood may soon live on in infamy
Albany Park was home to Rosenblum's Bookstore, Weinberg's Clothing — and also alleged DC shooter Elias Rodriguez
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Leonard Cohen’s Last Words Summon The Spirit Of The Poet
Like an urn is full of ash, a posthumous album can often be a light, insubstantial remembrance. The survivors who release it into the wind of public opinion can count themselves lucky if the contents do not rebound onto them embarrassingly. The best case scenario is usually a brief, respectful silence and then insignificance. Things…
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Film & TV Happy 103rd Birthday To Kirk Douglas
In honor of Kirk Douglas’s 103rd birthday, we reprint this tribute to the movie legend who was born Issur Danielovich to immigrant parents. Kirk Douglas, who turns 100 on December 9, is both a movie legend and a Hollywood anomaly: a star divided. Most stars lodge in our collective consciousness. Douglas, while a first-magnitude star,…
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The Secret Jewish History Of The Rockettes
Is there anything more goyish than the Rockettes, the “precision-dance” troupe best known for its starring role in the annual “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall? Well, yes. As it turns out, the entire creative team behind the annual Radio City holiday event, which began in 1932, were Jewish men brought together by Samuel…
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When Tragedy Struck A Rolling Stones Festival, And The Maysles Brothers Caught It On Film
18-year-old Meredith Hunter was pronounced dead at 6:20 PM Pacific Time on December 6, 1969. His killing defined the legacy of the Altamont Free Concert in Tracy, California — which had aspired to be a Woodstock for the west coast — partially because the jarring moments that preceded it were caught on film. Charlotte Zwerin…
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German Activists Apologize For Stunt Using Holocaust Victims’ Ashes
A German activist art collective is apologizing for a stunt that allegedly involved the remains of Holocaust victims. On Monday, the Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) placed an oversized urn on a metal pillar close to the Reichstag in Berlin, the home of Germany’s parliament, the BBCreported. The ZPS stated that the contents of the…
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Is ‘A Christmas Carol’ antisemitic?
Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” has been variously interpreted over the years as a humanist or secular parable, a pre-Freudian psychological thriller, an old-fashioned ghost story, an anti-capitalist screed, and, yes, a Jewish story wearing the cloak of Victorian England. It has also been mined for its anti-Semitic tropes, as has other work by Dickens…
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Who Are The Worst – And Best – Jewish Owners In Pro Sports?
Reports that hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen is in talks to buythe New York Mets from the Wilpon family are likely a relief to fans of the troubled National League team. But they’re also a reminder: Jews are vastly represented among the ranks of sports owners. Out of 147 teams in the five major North…
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Happy Ladino Day — How To Celebrate An Endangered Language
Today is International Ladino Day at the University of Washington in Seattle, where the seventh annual celebration of Ladino, the mother tongue of generations of Sephardic Jews, will take place. This year’s event theme is “De la fasha asta la mortaja: From the cradle to the grave.” The celebration comes at a critical time in…
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Workmen’s Circle Celebrates 120 Years With New, Gender-Neutral Name
One of the oldest Jewish American social justice organizations is celebrating its 120th year by showing it can still keep up with the hip, young nonprofits. The Workmen’s Circle, which has served Jewish and immigrant communities in New York for over a century and was a sister organization of the Forward for nearly as long,…
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Q & A: She’s Sarah Silverman’s Sister — And Just Officiated Tiffany Haddish’s Bat Mitzvah
Sure, there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood. But not one of them has ever had quite as memorable a showbiz bat mitzvah as Tiffany Haddish. Haddish, whose father is an Eritrean-born Ethiopian Jew, became bat mitzvah on December 3, her 40th birthday, and simultaneously premiered her new Netflix special “Black Mitzvah.” The actress…
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Dana Czapnik’s Novel Is So Good You Might Want To Read It Before You Bother Reading This Interview
Right after I finished reading “The Falconer,” I wanted to talk with Dana Czapnik. Actually, that’s not quite accurate — after I finished Czapnik’s debut novel, one that immerses you so thoroughly in its characters’ milieu that, at a certain point, you feel as though you’re living the story not just reading about it, I…
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