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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WATCH NOW: The Future of the Jewish People…and Cocktails
Watch here. Join Jay Sanderson, President & CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and Rob Eshman, National Editor of The Forward, for cooking, cocktails and discussion. Both foodies will make a sensational Shavuot dish and special dairy-based cocktail while talking food, the Jewish response to Covid-19, and the post-Covid Jewish future. This…
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A recently uncovered letter explains why ‘anti-Semitism’ wasn’t in the first Oxford English Dictionary
On July 5, 1900, James Murray, founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, penned a letter to Claude Montefiore explaining a conspicuous absence in an upcoming volume compiled some years before: An entry for the word “anti-Semitism.” The oldest hatred did appear in the first edition, but only within a list of “anti” combinations. In…
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WATCH: 300 musicians perform ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ to lift socially-distanced spirits
The key to the success of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II lies in how well their music works outside of its original context. It’s easy to forget — or to not even not know — the South Pacific setting of “Some Enchanted Evening” or to adapt “My Favorite Things” into a Christmas song or…
The Latest
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Your questions about “Unorthodox” and leaving Hasidic communities, answered
More than 2,000 of you joined our virtual conversation last week titled “Unorthodox: Reality vs. Fiction.” Alexa Karolinski, one of the creators of the blockbuster Netflix hit, was joined by our Yiddish editor, Rukhl Schaechter, and three people who, like the four-part series’ title character, Esty, had left Haredi communities: Chavie Weisberger of Footsteps, a…
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Your guide to everything Jewish about ‘Star Wars’
The temporally distant and far-flung galaxy of “Star Wars” is, like the Torah, a text touched by many hands over the years. While creator George Lucas’ initial narrative impulse — relying on dull arcana like the “Journal of the Whills” — was Midrashic, the many Jews who worked on the script, and eventually assumed the…
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Pandemics have always incited anti-Semitism. Here’s the history you need to know.
Every pandemic begins with a terrifying moment in which it seems impossible to explain what is happening. Often, whoever is considered the “other” in society is blamed, a scapegoating we see happening here and now. President Trump’s administration has drawn criticism for periodically insisting on calling the coronavirus “the Chinese virus,” a move many see…
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Sometimes freedom means leaving America behind
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Cienna Olenick, a student at the College International in Fontainebleau, France. You can find more work from our young writers here. “Est-ce que vous etes demi-pensionnaire ou externe?” our teacher asked. The blank…
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Think the sex in ‘Unorthodox’ was inaccurate? Check your male privilege
Eli Spitzer’s article “No, the way sex is portrayed in “Unorthodox” is not accurate — it’s a hateful libel” serves as both title and introduction to the screed leveled against the film-makers of “Unorthodox,” the four-episode Netflix series based in part on the memoir of the same name by Deborah Feldman. Feldman is a woman…
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WATCH NOW: Yihye Tov: A conversation/concert with David Broza
Watch here. Written with Yonatan Geffen in 1977, Broza’s anthem “Yihye Tov” (Things Will Be Better) has never been more resonant. Jodi Rudoren, Forward editor-in-chief, talks with the famed Israeli singer-songwriter about his life in quarantine in New York City; his just-released instrumental album of Spanish guitar, En Casa Limón; and the prospect of Tu…
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Why we must remember the martyrs of Kent State
This week marks the 45th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. 15 years ago, I visited Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Hanoi and Da Nang and for that brief period of time, got to know some people from the reunited country. It’s funny. Wars are started by governments, not people — I spoke…
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Why Mort Drucker mattered
If Andy Warhol was a great artist, so was Mort Drucker, the MAD Magazine cartoonist who died last month at the age of 91. Like Warhol, Drucker was a prolific draftsman with an unmistakable line (as thin and brisk as Warhol’s was fat and blotted). His great themes were the gleaming Warholian trinity of Hollywood,…
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