This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Learning about the First Amendment changed my life
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Lilli Libowitz, a 14-year-old student at the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, D.C. You can find more work from our young writers here Three years ago, when I was in fifth…
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Who should replace Ruby Rose as the Jewish Batwoman?
It was the most controversial bat-casting since Ben Affleck. No — not Robert Pattinson. When it was announced that Ruby Rose would take on the title role of Kate Kane in the CW’s “Batwoman,” fans of the crimson-haired crusader were not having it. Rose ticked one box — a lesbian woman playing a lesbian woman…
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This Puerto Rican-Jewish author misses her Mumbai home
Leah Franqui is stranded in her hometown of Philadelphia and missing her life in Mumbai. The 32-year-old Puerto Rican-Jewish novelist, whose books examine the United States and India through an outsider’s eye, has spent the last five years in the Indian metropolis, where she relocated after marrying her Kolkata-born husband. But the COVID-19 pandemic has…
The Latest
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In ‘Fiddler’ parody, Randy Rainbow continues a long musical ‘Tradition’
We Jews do not lack modern prophets. Many of them are musicians. Phil Ochs spoke truth to power with his guitar. Arlo Guthrie continued his father’s fascist-killing musical mission. Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing continues to reject the title of seer, but the fact he felt the need to do so proves he doth protest too…
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The dramatic allure of Mandy Patinkin’s quarantine tweets
A child’s duty to his or her parents is a central tenet of Jewish tradition. If you are the son of stage and screen star Mandy Patinkin and writer, actress and activist Kathryn Grody and you are social-distancing with them, your duty is to embarrass them via Twitter takeover. 33-year-old actor Gideon Grody-Patinkin, in quarantine…
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How a Pomeranian named Kiss is helping me through quarantine
Kiss is a three-pound, four-legged Pomeranian. She is an AKC-emotional support dog who has joined me at hospitals and in collaborations with organizations like ELEM/Youth in Distress in Israel, a nonprofit and a special consultant to the UN which provides life-altering support and services to at-risk Israeli youth. Kiss is the Hebrew word for pocket…
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Philip Roth’s ‘terrible gift of intimacy’
Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth By Benjamin Taylor Penguin Books, 171 pages, $26 Their relationship developed at a slow burn. Benjamin Taylor and Philip Roth met in 1994, at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Four years later, after reading “I Married a Communist,” Taylor wrote a letter, and Roth responded with a…
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The Secret Jewish History of The Who
Editor’s Note: Pete Townshend turns 75 today. In honor of that occasion, we look back at his band’s secret Jewish history, which we first explored in 2015. If The Who’s visionary songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had had his way, “Tommy” — an allegory about a traumatized messiah — would not have been the band’s…
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In ‘Mrs. America,’ only well-mannered women make history
Phyllis Schlafly is doing sit-ups. It’s the second episode of FX’s “Mrs. America,” and the anti-feminist crusader, portrayed by Cate Blanchett, is prostrate in her oak-panelled Illinois manse, getting her reps in while the television advertises diet Fresca. “When I put on a red pantsuit and my husband doesn’t notice, that’s bad,” a model croons….
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When Fred Willard spoke to (and for) the Jews
Fred Willard, the actor and improviser whose characters embodied blithe obliviousness, was not Jewish. The performer, rather, was at his best when he played the sort of un-self-aware putz that Jewish humor desperately needs — a sunny and thick-headed foil to the neurotic or arch sensibilities that Jews so often made their own. From his…
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Rush Limbaugh says Philip Roth is the favorite author of the ‘uber left wing’
On May 14, listeners to Rush Limbaugh’s radio program were treated to a primer on “left-wing” literature and a lesson on a more clinical term for farts. We have Philip Roth to thank. The teachable moment was prompted by a “Fresh Air” review of Benjamin Taylor’s memoir, “Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth,”…
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Yiddish נײַ־אַנטדעקטע פּרטים וועגן די סאָוועטישע ייִדן צווישן 1945 און 1953Newly discovered details about Soviet Jewry between 1945 and 1953
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