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 weirdest — and Jew-iest — moment from the Grammys
In a largely somber Grammys — brimming with mourning, green skulls and a profusion of fire — there was one outstanding moment of unexpected (if unintended) levity. In a star-studded and treacly musical theater montage, Camila Cabello, Cyndi Lauper, Common, Ben Platt and a crew of arts high school students serenaded departing Grammys producer Ken…
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What we talk about when we talk about Holocaust drawings
What are we looking at when we look at drawings? The art critic John Berger said that drawing was like discovery. “Each mark you make on paper is a stepping stone from which you proceed to the next, until you have crossed your subject as though it were a river.” In other words, drawing is…
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Meet the woman with the most Oscars ever
Edith Head had the look. She clothed Hollywood’s most glamorous, gifting Dorothy Lamour her trademark sarong, cloaking Kim Novak in a pristine white winter coat (collar popped), and making the grubby Great Depression look snappy with striped and checkered suits for Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “The Sting.” Her knack for understanding the fusion…
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Germany to honor 1700 years of Jewish culture in 2021
“German society, we have an increasing anti-Semitism here,” said Andrei Kovacs. “You can feel it as a Jew. I can feel it on my skin.” But Kovacs, a Romanian immigrant to Germany, has a plan to combat that bigotry: He’s the executive director of a government-backed effort to highlight the deep roots Jews have in…
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Beloved Marc Chagall painting, stolen in the ’90s, resurfaces at Israeli auction
TEL AVIV (JTA) — “Where’s the Chagall?” asked a visitor to this city’s Gordon Gallery on a January morning in 1996, hoping to glimpse one of the prize lots being auctioned days later by the gallery. The small Marc Chagall painting, titled “Jacob’s Ladder,” was prominently on display; a gallery employee walked the prospective buyer…
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Film & TV On Neil Diamond’s birthday, his most cringe-worthy moment
Editor’s note: Today is Neil Diamond’s 79th birthday. To mark the occasion, we’re revisiting this essay about the part the singer-songwriter played in one of Jewish cinema’s most peculiar moments. On October 6th 1927, the original film production of “The Jazz Singer” made its world premiere at the Warners’ Theatre in midtown Manhattan. (I know,…
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From Hungary — wild poems of Hasidic rabbis and brutal murderers
There are very few poetry collections which grow out of a backstory like the unspeakable one which powers the major Hungarian poet Szilárd Borbély’s “Final Matters,” and which left me shaking. “At two in the morning, his father had heard noises at the front door: he opened it and was struck on the head, falling…
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75 years ago, Auschwitz was liberated – here’s how the world is remembering
On January 27, 1945, the nightmare ended for some. 75 years ago Monday, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz. They found the camp unguarded, the Nazi guards having fled with the bulk of the prisoners ahead of the Red Army’s advance. Around 7,000 — most of whom were sick and dying — were released, by the Soviets….
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In this shattering film, the faustian allure of Nazism
When you study the long, infuriating, and infuriatingly long careers of the Third Reich’s major creative figures, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the public doesn’t give a shit about art. The propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl were invaluable weapons for the Nazi Party of the 1930s, but after the war she was…
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In Amsterdam, borne back ceaselessly into a Jewish past
House on Endless Waters By Emuna Elon; translated from Hebrew by Anthony Berris and Linda Yechiel Atria Books, 320 pages, $27 The plot of Emuna Elon’s lovely novel – about history, fiction and the importance of family ties — begins with a broken promise: The prominent Israeli novelist Yoel Blum has agreed to return to…
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How Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott identified with the Jews
Editor’s Note: Derek Walcott would have turned 90 today. In honor of this date, we’re revisiting this essay written on the occasion of the poet’s death on March 17, 2017. Derek Walcott, the Nobel Prize-winning poet from the West Indies who died March 17 at age 87, was long inspired by Jewish culture, history and…
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