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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Pot Roast Then & Now: A spicy tale of Jewish mothers and daughters
What can a Jewish cookbook from 1946 tell us about the 21st-century Jewish-American experience? Liza Schoenfein, the Forward’s senior food writer, and Jane Ziegelman, a culinary historian, took our signature collection of Yiddish recipes off the shelf and found a direct line from the balaboostas of yore to the kitchens of today. How Home Economics…
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Film & TV There’s something very Jewish about Winnie-The-Pooh — and it’s not just Eeyore’s attitude
Editor’s Note: A.A. Milne, the creator of the “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories was born on this day in 1882. To commemorate his birthday, we look back at the Jewish elements in his work. A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories have delighted youngsters for over 90 years, as have their numerous spinoffs as TV shows, cartoons, holiday specials, movies and,…
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How Leo Hurwitz, hounded by McCarthy, changed documentary film
One proof of documentarian Leo Hurwitz’s genius is how he continued working and innovating even while he was blacklisted. As America was in the fever of the red panic, the leftist filmmaker — perhaps best-remembered for capturing the syndicated TV footage Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Jerusalem — was still in demand, though officially barred…
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Culture minister fired for giving a speech by Goebbels — literally
We live in an age of anti-Semitic political dog whistles, from President Trump’s summer comments on Jewish “disloyalty” to a Labour party member’s claim that Hitler was “misunderstood.” But there’s subtly invoking Nazi ideology, and there’s giving a speech written by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels over the strains of one of Hitler’s favorite operas….
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At a Holocaust play reading, a Jewish community divided
On Thursday night at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Theater of War presented excerpts from Peter Weiss’s “The Investigation,” culled from transcripts of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials from the 1960s. The script’s content ranges from clinical descriptions of Nazi horrors to stirring, if understated, testimony on the banality…
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The secret Jewish history of Muhammad Ali
Editor’s Note: The boxer and civil rights icon Muhammad Ali, who died on June 3, 2016, at the age of 74, would have turned 78 today. On this occasion, we return to this story about the champ’s complex relationship with the Jewish people. Muhammad Ali was accused of having “frequently clashed with the Jewish people.”…
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She shattered the glass coffin of fairy tale endings
For a period of six weeks in 1994, the artist Rachel Feinstein slept in a makeshift gingerbread house on display at Exit Art, a Manhattan gallery. The performance was called “Let the Artist Live,” and Feinstein could be glimpsed, in sleeping pill-aided slumber, through the window of the house, resembling a dreamy if slightly debauched…
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Where are all the Others in Jewish Studies
In 2018, the Forward published and article by Susannah Heschel and Sarah Imhoff headlined “Where Are All the Women in Jewish Studies?” They highlighted the book, Hasidism: A New History, whose eight authors are all men. As one of those eight, I was tempted to respond. After a few exchanges with colleagues, however, I realized…
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How the Trumps and Kushners corrupted the American Dream
American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps and the Marriage of Money and Power By Andrea Bernstein W.W. Norton & Company, 496 pages, $30 For those of us who don’t have power, it’s difficult to comprehend exactly how it works. The ordinary things we do to move our lives forward — make budgets, pay bills, try…
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Deborah Lipstadt, Etgar Keret and Ilya Kaminsky take home National Jewish Book Awards
Updated, January 17, 4:32 pm: This story has been updated to include a list to the complete list of winners of the 2019 awards. Short tales of whimsy, a new translation of the Bible, unsung American matriarchs and two rousing calls to combat the so-called “oldest hatred:” These are the winners of the 69th Annual…
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The Kafkaesque story of how Kafka’s “Trial” got cancelled
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s response to NYU Skirball’s statement that “The Trial” was cancelled due to its decision to withdraw funds. A stage adaptation of Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” which was set to debut in New York at the NYU Skirball Center March 7, has been…
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Yiddish װאָס קען מען זיך אָפּלערנען פֿון מאָלי קראַבעפּלס בוך װעגן „בונד“?What can we learn from Molly Crabapple’s book about the Bund?
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט