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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8 Questions For Author Sam Lipsyte
No one hits a satirical bullseye like Sam Lipsyte. In “Home Land,” a Portnoy-esque series of monologues, published in 2005, the novelist sniped at the convention of the dreaded alumni newsletter; in the 2010 novel “The Ask,” Lipsyte took aim at the donor system in American higher learning. His targets have only gotten bigger: His…
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Theater I Remember ‘Aunt Carol’ Channing
“This temple is going to the dogs,” said the congregant making her way to a seat, to no one in particular but loudly enough for half the sanctuary to hear. “The nerve of them! Bringing in a Carol Channing impersonator — and for the High Holidays!” What had irked her was the announcement just made…
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The Essential Jewishness Of Carol Channing — And Lorelei Lee
The Broadway star Carol Channing, who died on January 15 at age 97, reminded us that caricatures of genius can express humanity and vitality, encapsulating people. Channing was the daughter of Adelaide Glaser (1886–1984), of German Jewish origin. The artist Al Hirschfeld claimed that Channing, along with Zero Mostel, was one of his favorite subjects….
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Alice Walker Still Doesn’t Get It
When it comes to anti-Semitism, Alice Walker still doesn’t get it. Or to be more precise, she still wasn’t getting it when she wrote her most recent blog post, which contains a poem titled “Conscious Earthlings.” The post begins with an email that Walker writes was sent to her by Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli scholar…
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Librarians And Researchers Are Finally Making Strides Returning Nazi-Looted Books
If you wander the stately stacks of a European library, you may very well encounter books that were looted by the Nazis in World War II. During the 1930s and 40s, Alfred Rosenberg, the leader of the Nazi’s Office of Foreign Policy led the eponymous Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg task force in pillaging over 6,000 archives…
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Art A 92-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Was Haunted By Hitler. So He Started Dressing Up As Him.
There is no one way to grieve or process a tragedy of an unimaginable scale. Still, few displays of grief are as curious as that favored by the 92-year-old Israeli artist Dov Or-Ner, a Holocaust survivor who appears in public dressed as Adolf Hitler. Or-Ner, a veteran sculptor and painter whose parents died in the…
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He Plays Ukraine’s President On TV. Now He’s Running For That Very Same Office.
It’s become a cliché in the United States to say we have a Reality TV President, but Ukraine may well get a sitcom Head of State. 40-year-old Jewish comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy formally announced his plans to run for the Ukrainian presidency shortly before midnight on New Year’s Eve If he wins, Ukranians may not be…
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Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman To Bring ‘Yiddish Policemen’s Union’ To TV
Proving they’re more than just a literary dream couple, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon are in the thick of a new endeavor: Overseeing a TV show. The duo has collaborated on TV projects before, starting with a 2011 project titled “Hobgoblin” that remains unmade. But their latest project is different, because it’s an adaptation of…
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Film & TV Kane Street Synagogue’s Brooklyn Israel Film Festival Brings The Movies To Shul
For film lovers the cinema can be a kind of temple. For 15 years the Kane Street Synagogue has been taking that truth to heart, hosting the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival in the same building in which its congregants meet for services. This year the festival is adding a short film series, screening an Israeli…
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The 15 Women You’ll Meet When You Date Jews In New York
Women — fun to hang out with, interesting, beautiful, rarely murder anyone, gestate life, socialized to be empathetic and good at communication. What’s to mock? Not to mention that the roots of negative female archetypes can usually be traced to the dang patriarchy! But if we don’t make fun of women, we exclude them from…
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Film & TV The BAFTA Awards Favor ‘The Favourite’ And These Jewish Films
In a busy awards season, it’s easy to forget the BAFTAs. But the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has not forgotten the Jewish people. The Academy’s 2019 Film Awards list was released Tuesday. The full list is here, but below are the (mostly) Jewish highlights. “The Favourite,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ comedy about Queen Anne’s…
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Fast Forward ‘Antisemitic hit-and-run squads’: Amsterdam temporarily bans demonstrations after Israeli soccer fans attacked by street mobs
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