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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Film & TV Why the hot rabbi is having a moment (again)
Adam Brody is set to play a religious leader with sex appeal — he isn’t the first
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Film & TV Why The Hollywood Blacklist Is A Jewish Story (And Also A Milwaukee Story)
It started three years ago. I was the lone staff member welcoming guests to Jewish Museum Milwaukee (JMM) on an Air Show Sunday. It had been a pretty slow day. My office was filled with the droning of jet engines, and people who weren’t into watching the Blue Angels were avoiding the Milwaukee Lakefront. I…
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Remembering Bernie Glassman — A Zen Mensch
Bernie Glassman, one of the most important American Buddhist teachers, died Sunday November 4 at the age of 79. His life, and his integration of Judaism and Buddhism, now stands as a perfect, imperfect monument to the pursuit of spirituality and social justice. Perhaps fittingly, Glassman passed away just as one of the organizations he…
The Latest
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6 Questions For Jonathan Lethem
In more than one way Jonathan Lethem’s latest novel “The Feral Detective” is a return to basics. The book reengages with his bold first-person voice and his Raymond Chandler roots, but also tells a story about aching for reinvention in a simpler world. Its main character, Phoebe Siegler, quits her job at The New York…
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Music Barbra Streisand’s Latest Is Surprisingly Political (And Astonishingly Good)
Ever wonder what’s on Barbra Streisand’s mind these days? Well, wonder no more. This past Friday, Streisand released a brand-new album, the aptly titled “Walls,” which kicks off with a new song called “What’s on My Mind.” “What happened to just being kind? That’s what’s on my mind,” Streisand tells us, on one of the…
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Meticulous In Literature, Messy In Life — The Real Saul Bellow
The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005 By Zachary Leader Knopf, 784 pp, $40 By Steven G. Kellman In 1998, when the Modern Library polled readers to determine the 100 best novels in English, two books by Saul Bellow — “Henderson the Rain King” and “The Adventures of Augie March” — made the…
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Why Pittsburgh Paper’s ‘Kaddish’ Headline Is So Meaningful
The course of history occasionally brings a front page that proves impossible to forget. The Chicago Tribune’s premature, incorrect declaration “Dewey Defeats Truman” on November 3, 1948; The New York Times’s “U.S. Attacked” headline on September 12, 2001; the ubiquitous “Nixon Resigns” headlines on August 9, 1974. For many, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s front page of…
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Squirrel Hill’s Sophie Masloff Was Pittsburgh’s First Female Jewish Mayor
Pittsburgh’s Jewish history is receiving renewed attention in the wake of the October 28 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue. But while we mourn, we also acknowledge that there is much to celebrate about the community’s past. Did you know, for instance, that the first female Mayor of Pittsburgh was also Jewish?* Sophie Masloff,…
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At The Met, A Kleptomaniac To Dye For
Competing versions of the same story can draw one’s attention to the moments of divergence, like to a distinguishing mark or tic. In this way, it seems notable that the eponymous protagonist of Nico Muhly’s new opera “Marnie,” adapted from the 1961 Winston Graham novel that also inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 film of the same…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Queen
Had things gone the way they were originally supposed to, the lead role of Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody” – the biopic about the rock group Queen that opens on Friday, November 2 – would have been played by Sacha Baron Cohen instead of Rami Malek. That’s right: Instead of the Los Angeles-born son of…
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Music Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’ Was Pretty Jewish Behind The Scenes
More like “Tangled Up in Jew.” In an October 31, 2018 piece for the New Yorker music journalist Jeff Slate revealed the early recording history of Bob Dylan’s 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks” and its little known Jewish connections. Slate, who wrote the liner notes for “More Blood, More Tracks,” the latest in Dylan’s…
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Will The Pittsburgh Bloodbath Forge A Bond Between American Jews And Muslims?
Within hours of the October 27 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Muslim-American activists sprang into action. Tarek El-Messidi, founding director of the faith-based nonprofit Celebrate Mercy launched a “Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue” campaign on LaunchGood, a Muslim fundraising website, with the goal of providing for the short-term needs of…
Most Popular
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Opinion A daring attack on Hezbollah may reveal Israel’s strengths — and its most terrifying weakness
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Fast Forward Steve Witkoff, Trump’s golf buddy when would-be assassin took aim, said they became friends over a ham sandwich
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Fast Forward Who is Laura Loomer? Trump wing woman uses her Jewishness to attack
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Fast Forward Potential Trump visit to iconic Gottlieb’s deli has Hasidic world aflutter
In Case You Missed It
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Culture In ‘The Brutalist,’ Adrien Brody wills an impossible dream
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Fast Forward Trump says Jews would deserve much of the blame if he loses
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Sports As Shohei Ohtani comes for his home run record, a Jewish Dodger legend is in awe with the rest of us
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Fast Forward California passes law to help Holocaust survivors and heirs recover Nazi-looted art
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