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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Theater Jason Alexander lives out a lifelong dream, playing Tevye in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
'I wanted to do a piece that is proudly Semitic' said the Tony winner and ‘Seinfeld' star
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Why Making Hebrew Nonbinary Is So Crucial
The Israeli poet Yona Wallach memorably wrote that “Hebrew is a sex maniac.” Wallach, who died in 1985, was no stranger to attention-grabbing subjects: One of her poems discusses sex with tefillin. Today, pronouns are a hot topic, and Wallach’s poem “Hebrew,” which explains why gender-neutral language is easier to accomplish in English, is the…
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Art How An English Apartment Building Reveals An Architect’s Painful Jewish Past
On the face of it, there’s not much that’s Jewish about Highpoint II. The pre-World War II apartment complex, located in the Highgate suburb of London, is a sequel of sorts to architect Berthold Lubetkin’s groundbreaking Highpoint I from 1935. The first building was the apogee of modernist architecture with its white concrete, flat roof,…
The Latest
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WATCH: Vermont State Representative Avram Patt Greets Us In Yiddish
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Avram Patt was sworn in on Wednesday, January 9, for a two-year term in the Vermont House of Representatives. He had previously served there from 2015-2016. In the video above, made especially for the Forverts, Patt greets his constituents and Forverts readers in Yiddish. “Politics is in…
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Joyce Carol Oates To Receive 2019 Jerusalem Prize
Like her greatest subject, Joyce Carol Oates has an interesting relationship with Judaism. In her Pulitzer and National Book Award-nominated novel “Blonde,” Oates channeled the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, one of our faith’s most curious converts. Now, the Jewish State is honoring the author for her contribution to literature with the 2019 Jerusalem Prize…
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The Peculiar Saga Of The Black Jew Who Founded San Francisco
In 1840 or 1841, a wedding in New Orleans was abruptly canceled. The bridegroom, admitting he was born out of wedlock and that his mother was black, fled on a ship bound for the West. His well-heeled bride-to-be died soon after this, some believe of shock. That ashamed groom, who was not allowed to marry…
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Forward Contributor Julia M. Klein Receives Second National Book Critics Circle Nomination
The 2018 finalists for the National Book Critics Circle were announced January 22, recognizing Jewish writers Stephen Greenblatt, for his book “Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics”, Rachel Kushner’s novel “Mars Room” and Adam Winkler’s “We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.” While we can’t help but bask in the tribal naches of these…
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Mirjam Pressler Showed The World The Real Anne Frank
Anne Frank’s story could seem straightforward. Mirjam Pressler knew it was anything but. To start, there were the multiple versions of Frank’s diary, Frank revised her journal entries exactingly, leaving behind multiple drafts. On top of that, her father, Otto Frank, had censored various aspects of her work. Then there was the matter of filling…
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At Greek Yiddish Week, Karaoke, Folk Dance And A Wedding
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. If you enjoy strenuous physical activity in your free time you’ll be happy to know that the Yiddish world recently ran its own marathon. A Yiddish marathon is a bit different than the others, though. Here, it’s not feet but time that flies, even if the exertion…
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EXCLUSIVE: The Soloway Sisters: Are Their Boundaries Your Triggers?
Growing up in the 1970s in a lower-middle-class liberal Jewish family in Brooklyn, I lived in an integrated Mitchell Lama building and went to an integrated local school. I also went to protests, singing “We Shall Overcome” with Pete Seeger at the South Street Seaport; to me, that was part of being Jewish. It was…
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How Nathan Glazer Dared To Change His Mind (And Ours)
The sociologist Nathan Glazer, who died on January 19 at age 95, proved that thinking is an exercise in modification. Unlike pundits who calcify ideas and opinions to better give readers what they expect, Glazer was constantly reformulating his notions, even after publishing classic books such as “American Judaism,” and “Beyond the Melting Pot.” In…
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Mourning Mary Oliver, America’s Spiritual Conscience
Is it possible to be born in a place that sounds more poetic than Maple Heights? That was where Mary Oliver came from: Maple Heights, Ohio. Not everyone from that town was destined to live out the lyric simplicity promised by their birthplace’s name, but Oliver was, and she did. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, who…
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