Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
The tale of Schick's Bakery is one of 20th-century ingenuity and 21st-century capitalism
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‘Tootsie,’ ‘The Ferryman’ and ‘Hadestown’ Win Big At The 2019 Drama Desk Awards
On Sunday, June 2 the 64th Annual Drama Desk Awards honored a diverse season both on and Off-Broadway, but revivals, transfers and familiar names won the evening. Leading the winners with four awards each were Anaïs Mitchell’s folk musical, “Hadestown;” “The Ferryman,” Jez Butterworth’s play of the Irish troubles; and “Tootsie,” David Yazbek and Robert…
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His Father, The Communist
A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father By David Maraniss Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $28 As a biographer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss has trained his eye on U.S. presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) and sports icons (Roberto Clemente and Vince Lombardi). In “A Good American Family,” he burrows…
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A Holocaust Art Exhibit Was Vandalized, Again And Again. But Vienna Is Fighting Back.
On the night of Sunday, May 26, a public art installation in Vienna featuring portraits of Holocaust survivors was slashed with a knife by an unknown assailant. It wasn’t the first time. The installation by the German-Italian artist Luigi Toscana, called “Lest We Forget,” includes 70 blown-up photographs of survivors printed on eight-by-five foot weather-proof…
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The Secret Jewish History Of The Happy Meal
In June of 1979, 40 years ago, the world of picky eaters experienced a total game changer. That month, McDonald’s went national with a cardboard clutch containing a choice of hamburger or cheeseburger, a small drink, cookies, a small bag of fries and — of course — a toy. The Happy Meal, like the fast…
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Art The Secret Jewish History Of Popeye The Sailor Man
It’s the 90th anniversary of the creation of Popeye, and the Yiddishkeit of the sailor, created by American Jewish cartoonist Elzie Segar (1894–1938), is more apparent than ever. There’s even a Popeye The Sailor Man Mezuzah sold online to protect Jewish homes from evil. Yet explicit Jewish content was scant in the Illinois-born Segar’s original…
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From ‘The Black Dahlia’ To ‘Tulip Fever,’ Are Flower-Based Films Doomed To Fail?
In 1637, a craze for hybrid tulips brought the Dutch economy to its knees. The flowers were overvalued, creating the first speculative bubble on record. The phenomenon, called “Tulip Mania,” ended in financial ruin for many. Some 380 years later, a film called “Tulip Fever,” set during Tulip Mania and produced by Harvey Weinstein, also…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Walt Whitman
The poet Walt Whitman, whose bicentenary is on May 31, found universal inspiration in all Americans, including Jews. As a young journalist and newspaper editor in March 1842, he wrote in “The New York Aurora” under the headline “The More the Merrier”: “Our Jewish citizens have lately taken quite a fancy to The Aurora. They…
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Netflix ‘Roasted’ Anne Frank. They Could Have Left Hitler’s Genitals Out Of It.
Sure, you can poke fun at Anne Frank. But it may be a mistake to do so by joking about Hitler’s testicles. That’s the approach that comedian Jeff Ross takes in the “Anne Frank” episode of his new Netflix series “Historical Roasts,” in which historical figures take the stage in order to be lampooned by…
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This Holocaust Survivor’s Tapestries Show Her ‘Affirmation Of Life’
Ted Comet is an indefatigable leader and public figure who will serve as a grand marshal of the upcoming Celebrate Israel Parade, but he does one of his most important jobs in the privacy of his own Upper West Side apartment. That’s where he gives tours to school groups, rabbinic students, psychoanalysts and historians of…
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‘Anne Frank: The Musical’ To Premiere Off-Broadway In September
A musical adaptation of the life of Anne Frank will make its U.S. premiere at the Center for Jewish History this September. “Anne Frank, The Musical,” written by composer-playwright Jean-Pierre Hadida, made its debut in Paris in 2008. Hadida is not the first to attempt to tell Frank’s story in a musical; Enid Futterman and…
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