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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Books
Are you there, Judy Blume? It’s me, Molly.
I spent my childhood summers in a small beach town near Mystic, Conn., swimming in the frigid Fishers Island Sound, catching crabs by affixing sliced hot dogs — or, in a pinch, mussels crushed beneath a paving stone — to thick white string and dangling the bait off the dock. I accompanied my older cousin…
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What Judy Blume taught me about sex, female friendship and hot tubs
Editor’s note: This piece was originally published for Judy Blume’s 80th birthday on February 12, 2018. We’ve republished it in honor of her 82nd birthday. It may not have actually happened this way, but this is how I remember learning about sex: My mother, when I was 11, bought me a copy of Elizabeth Forsythe…
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Did Trump really miss the point of this ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ clip?
President Trump has a busy cable news-viewing schedule, so perhaps he can be forgiven for not being up to date on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” On Monday night, the president tweeted a (NSFW) clip from the show’s season 10 premiere that aired on January 19. He appeared to miss some crucial context, but that doesn’t mean…
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Did Kirk Douglas really use his last words to endorse Bloomberg?
Mike Bloomberg is paying online influencers to make his presidential campaign look hip, evidently anxious about cornering the youth vote. But the state of his base is perhaps best summed up by an altogether different alleged endorsement: That of film legend Kirk Douglas, who died last week at the age of 103. This weekend at…
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WATCH NOW: Jodi Rudoren to moderate: “Deal of the Century”: What Now for the Israeli Left?”
This event has already taken place. Watch the video recording here. Listen in as Editor-in-Chief Jodi Rudoren moderates a Partners for Progressive Israel webinar, “‘Deal of the Century’: What Now for the Israeli Left?” with Aluf Benn, Editor-in-Chief of Haaretz and Akiva Eldar, columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse. Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu recently announced…
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Books In a change of heart, Amazon has dropped white nationalist books
Amazon has removed several white nationalist and anti-Semitic books from its website, a change from its past policy of defending the sale of objectionable publications, The New York Times reported Sunday. While the online marketplace has frequently removed things like anti-Semitic action figures and Christmas ornaments listed for purchase by third-party sellers, it has traditionally…
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Mazel tov: First edition of Yiddish ‘Harry Potter’ sells out in less than 48 hours
Less than 48 hours after the Yiddish edition of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” translated by Arun Viswanath, became available for pre-order, the book sold out its first print run of 1,000 copies. (Viswanath is Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter’s nephew.) For a Yiddish publisher in 2020, that’s a sales number that’s almost magical. A…
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The Jewish, Polish, Mexican theater director who mentored Alejandro Iñárritu
Did you hear the one about Alejandro Iñárritu’s Jewish Polish-Mexican directing mentor? If you weren’t busy checking your Oscars ballot during the commercials on Sunday, you may have heard Iñárritu, the Academy Award-winning director of “Birdman” (2014) and “The Revenant” (2016) give a shout-out to a director named Ludwik Margules during a Rolex commercial. “Ludwik…
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At a historic Oscars, Jews from Taika Waititi to Joaquin Phoenix made their mark
The 2020 Oscars, host-less and lacking diversity, were mostly programmatic — but still packed some surprises. The night was historic, marking the first time a non-English language film has ever won Best Picture. Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” which also swept Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film, follows a have-not South Korean…
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Talking with Taika Waititi — before ‘Jojo Rabbit’
Editor’s note: Taika Waititi won the 2020 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Jojo Rabbit.” But before he became a household name in the United States — he also directed the widely-beloved “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017) — he was the brightest light in filmmaking in his native New Zealand. To honor the Maori Jewish director’s groundbreaking Oscars victory,…
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Film & TV The Jewish Kirk Douglas film that everyone seems to have forgotten
The obituaries of Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas uniformly recount some of Douglas’s — and Hollywood’s — greatest films: “Spartacus,” “Paths Of Glory,” “Out Of the Past,” “Ace In the Hole,” “Lust For Life. Yet, when I think of a quintessential Kirk Douglas film it is not of any of those, but his now largely forgotten…
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