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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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History of ‘The White Shadow’
Forty years ago this fall, an unassuming yet groundbreaking CBS-TV series called “The White Shadow,” about an inner-city high-school basketball team coached by a former white NBA player, made its debut, bringing the realities of racism, alcoholism, drugs, gang violence, domestic violence, student violence against teachers, student sex with teachers, teen pregnancy, teen death, sexually…
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The World Set Rules For Returning Nazi-Looted Art. Are They Working?
In November, the Austrian government revealed that nearly two decades ago it returned the wrong Nazi-looted Gustav Klimt painting to the wrong Jewish family. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is working to return cultural items looted by colonialists to their African countries of origin. Elaborate, precise heists are targeting Chinese artifacts in museums across the globe,…
The Latest
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Art Can Virtual Reality Bring Palestinians And Jews Closer Together?
Raji Sabateen, 56, lives in the village of Husan in the Palestinian West Bank, a place where few Israelis dare to visit. But over the past five months, thousands of Israelis have spent time inside Sabateen’s home through the power of virtual reality. Sabateen’s home is featured at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum as part of “Eye…
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Film & TV Chronicles Of John Garfield’s Death Foretold In His Final Film
As in his earlier hit “Body and Soul” (1948), John Garfield’s final film “He Ran All the Way” (1951) begins with the actor waking up from an apparently very unpleasant dream. While the return from a nightmare is not an uncommon twist in those older Hollywood movies that veer into darker territory — the familiar…
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Should Linda Fairstein’s Involvement In The Central Park Five Case Keep Her From A Mystery Writing Award?
Mystery novels can be morally dubious. They often use horrific incidents to entertain and sometimes to titillate their readers. We can continue to enjoy them without too much compunction, however, knowing that the events are made up. So what happens when someone who supervised a real-world miscarriage of justice is being honored for her work…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History Of SpongeBob Squarepants
On November 26 Stephen Hillenburg, the unassuming marine biologist who reached millions with his cartoon creation SpongeBob Squarepants passed away from complications of ALS. Hillenburg was 57. Eternally optimistic, absorbent, yellow and porous, Hillenburg’s signature creation truly needs no introduction, nor does his permanent residence in a pineapple under the sea. But how did such…
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Stephen Miller High School Clips Prove Some Folks Don’t Ever Grow Up
Almost none of us want reminders of our high school years made public. Then again most of us have some shame, something Stephen Miller, the man at the forefront of Trump’s most draconian immigration policies, appears to be lacking. On a November 25 episode of Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix series “Patriot Act,” which focused on immigration…
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Theater Folksbiene To Follow ‘Fiddler’ With Premiere Of Opera About The Rise Of The Nazis
Erich Rosenthal, a Jewish scholar, watched the rise of the Nazis from the United States. He’d managed to escape his native Germany, but his family wasn’t so lucky. Now his son, the composer Ted Rosenthal, is poised to give new voice to the tormented years his father spent praying for his family from afar. In…
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Aaron Sorkin Doesn’t Seem To Know Why His ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Should Exist Either
Aaron Sorkin began his career with a staged courtroom drama, “A Few Good Men,” and is entering into a controversial late period with another. Like his biblical namesake, Sorkin has taken on a sacred cow, adapting Harper Lee’s beloved novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the Broadway stage. It’s a task he referred to in…
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Should The Quran And New Testament Come With Trigger Warnings For Jews?
Trigger warnings continue to be a touchy subject in college classrooms, but could they be making their way to bible study groups? The Daily Mail Reports that, following a conference this month in Vienna, the European Jewish Congress produced a series of guidelines that suggest adding introductions and disclaimers to anti-Semitic passages found in the…
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The Secret Jewish History Of ‘Casablanca’ And Rick Blaine
Murray Burnett was shaken by what he witnessed in Europe during the summer of 1938, so when the high school English teacher and aspiring writer returned home to New York in early September, he felt compelled to write a play about his fellow Jews forced to flee Nazi terror. He was also convinced that a…
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