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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The Joan of Arc of Irish sex — and her Jewish acolytes
In mid-April, The Irish Times alerted its readership to an “astonishing hatchet job” of a national icon, the novelist Edna O’Brien. The offending article, a condescending and nit-picking profile, had appeared some months before in The New Yorker, but took some time for its venom to percolate as far as Europe. O’Brien, who will be…
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“The end is actually the beginning” — and other life lessons from the Zabar’s lox counter
September 1996. It’s unsettling. You’re over 50, you’re Jewish, you walk into Zabar’s expecting that old time Yiddish flavor behind the counter, but all the lox men are Chinese. Well, almost all: a sprinkling of Hispanics, an African American here and there, and yes, an occasional Jew. What was I to do? So, I sold…
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Why I choose to give up freedoms to be free
Editor’s Note: The Forward’s Youth Writing Contest is asking middle and high school students to submit essays, short stories and poems on the topic “What It Means To Be Free.” We’re still accepting entries at [email protected] — you can find the entry guidelines here.The deadline is Friday, May 1. Today, we’re proud to publish this…
The Latest
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Live in Freedom (An Acrostic Poem)
Editor’s Note: The Forward’s Youth Writing Contest is asking middle and high school students to submit essays, short stories and poems on the topic “What It Means To Be Free.” We’re still accepting entries at [email protected] — you can find the entry guidelines here.The deadline is Friday, May 1. Today, we’re proud to publish this…
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‘The Beastie Boys Story:’ a sad, stilted epilogue from a once outrageous band
The Beastie Boys are feeling their age. In “The Beastie Boys Story,” a taped performance of the band’s non-musical stage show from 2019 available now on Apple TV+, Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) and Michael Diamond (Mike D) — the two surviving members of the legendary hip hop trio — dive into their 30-year history through anecdotes…
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Let’s talk about Andrew Cuomo’s oddly thirsty Yom HaShoah photo
In the public eye, the last two months have been something of a high point for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. His clear, forceful daily briefings on the coronavirus crisis — accompanied by blunt, unintentionally hilarious homemade PowerPoints — have won him legions of new fans. New Yorkers, accustomed to viewing their elected officials with…
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No, the way sex is portrayed in ‘Unorthodox’ is not accurate — it’s a hateful libel
The four-part Netflix series ‘Unorthodox’ is the latest in a growing mini-industry of books and television programs depicting the inner working of the Hasidic community to an apparently vast market of fascinated observers. It has justly been praised for the attention to detail paid in accurately depicting clothes, haircuts, furniture, Hebrew accents and, in a…
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Did Bob Dylan anticipate the coronavirus epidemic in these 12 songs?
In the past few weeks, Bob Dylan has released two new songs, “Murder Most Foul” and “I Contain Multitudes,” which people have combed for references to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Never mind that these songs were most likely written and recorded months if not years before the new coronavirus upended our world. But the fact…
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In the story of Henry VIII, lessons for Jews in power
Sometimes, books pair together naturally, like steak and red wine. At other times, the rhymes are harder to hear, but sound deeply and stay sticky in the brain. That’s the case with Hilary Mantel’s “Mirror and the Light” and Ruth Wisse’s “Jews and Power.” The first is about a person, the second about a people….
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Need something to listen to in quarantine? Here are our podcast picks.
Podcasts were once merely the niche hipster cousins of terrestrial radio. That changed in 2014, a decade into the form’s existence, when “This American Life” debuted its offshoot podcast “Serial,” introducing mainstream audiences to both the gripping case of Adnan Syed and the vast and democratic potential of downloadable digital audio. Now, there’s a podcast…
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The Secret Jewish History of William Shakespeare
Editor’s Note: This story originally ran on April 23, 2018. We are revisiting it on the occasion of William Shakespeare’s 456th birthday. Had William Shakespeare never died, he would be turning 456 years old this year, which would put him in biblical territory for longevity. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily such an unusual…
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