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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In J.D. Salinger’s Archives, Proof Of Life And Not Much Else
If you visit the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library to see a collection of items belonging to the late author J.D. Salinger, you will first have to check your phone, coat and bag. This is a fitting prelude to an exhibition on a writer for whom privacy was paramount. “Of course, he…
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On National Redhead Day, Explore the History of Ginger Jews
As any self-respecting redhead will tell you, it’s not just a hair color – it’s a lifestyle. But we didn’t always live in a world of redhead reunions and spitfire portrait series. For centuries, red hair was feared and reviled – especially when it came to Europe’s Jews. In honor of National Redhead Day, we’ve…
The Latest
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After 500 Years, An Illustrated Spanish Bible Returns From Exile
Hebrew Bibles, unlike their best-known Christian and Muslim counterparts, are not renowned for their elaborate ornamentation. But during the Middle Ages, some were as vivid and artful as the famous illuminated New Testaments and Qurans we marvel over today. Imagine figures of naked men contorted into the shape of Hebrew letters; a full-page illustration of…
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A Survivor’s Story Where No One Is Exactly Who They Seem
The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing By Adam P. Frankel Harper, 271 pages, $27.99 Whenever he excelled, Adam P. Frankel’s paternal grandmother offered these words of encouragement: “Good genes.” The astute reader may detect a hint of ironic foreshadowing. Frankel’s memoir, “The Survivors,” takes a series of surprising, sometimes unwieldy, twists and…
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Elaine May, Mounting A Comeback At 87, Is Directing A New Film
Buried deep in the thirteenth paragraph of a trade paper awards season report was news that threatens to upend the film industry as we know it. Deadline has it that 87-year-old comedy legend Elaine May is busy directing another feature film, her first in 32 years. The film will be called “Crackpot” and will feature…
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Edith Halpert — Come Back, The Art World Needs You More Than Ever!
“Good taste,” the critic Dave Hickey wrote in “Air Guitar,” “is the residue of someone else’s privilege.” Yes and no. Billionaires buy art and inflate artists’ reputations, but usually they need to be reminded of what they like before they cut the check. The key figure in the process of canonizing art is not the…
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Over 60 Nazi Objects, Set For Argentina Exhibition, Found To Be Fake
Less than a month after 72 Nazi objects, seized by Argentine police, made their way to the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum, a 32-person European delegation declared most of them to be phony. The artifacts, dubbed “Hitler’s Silver Treasure” by the Argentinian media, included busts of Hitler, a Nazi-themed ouija board, medals and a set of…
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You Can Own Marilyn Monroe’s Menorah – That’s Lit!
Even before her 1956 conversion, Marilyn Monroe, was attached to Judaism. One of the most famous photos of the screen legend, with her white skirt fluttering in a jet of subway exhaust, was snapped by Garry Winogrand. The picture was promotion for Billy Wilder’s “The Seven Year Itch” (1955). A year after the film’s debut,…
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Q&A: How Stan Lee Changed Comics – And The World
If comic books have a face — one that isn’t penciled, inked and boxed into a panel — that face is Stan Lee’s. For Lee, this fact proved to be both an asset and a sore subject throughout his life. Lee created — with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and countless other artists, letterers and writers…
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Let’s Call André Aciman’s Sequel By Its Name
Find Me By André Aciman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 272 pages, $27.00 In fairness to André Aciman, it would have been very difficult to write a good sequel to “Call Me By Your Name,” his stunning 2007 novel about an Italian-American teenager’s coming-of-age via his sun-soaked affair with a visiting male graduate student. That book…
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The Warrior Skeleton Claimed By Nazis — And Then By Soviets
The skeleton of the unknown warrior lay beneath the courtyard of a ninth-century Czech castle, one hand on the pommel of an iron sword. 1,000 years after his death, his life became the subject of speculation in the emerging field of race science — with potential global consequences. Two great powers strained to link the…
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