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 In ‘The Rehearsal’ season 2, is Nathan Fielder serious?
The comedian is out to solve an epidemic of airplane crashes — will the world listen?
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Books New Book ‘Kushner, Inc’ Makes Wild Claims — But The Wildest Thing Is Reading About Javanka At All
A new book, “Kushner, Inc” by journalist Vicky Ward, calls itself “the first explosive book about Javanka and their infamous rise to power.” The gleaming hardcover, bearing the words “Greed. Ambition. Corruption.” promises to “dig [sic] beneath the myth the couple has created.” This is a case of beautifully coiffed snake eats tail — digging…
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Film & TV Behold Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Bold Thoughts On #MeToo And Roman Polanski
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a man of ideas. A celebrity philosopher of the kind that has no equivalent this side of the Atlantic, he’s nonetheless picked the United States as the subject of his latest book, “The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World,” in which he lays out how…
The Latest
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Does The Book Of Esther Have The Longest Word In The Hebrew Bible?
For word nerds, the Book of Esther contains a special treat — the longest word in the Tanakh. Technically, v’ha’achshadrapanim and its eleven letters makes it the length champion of the entire Hebrew Bible. It means “and the satraps” or “and the governors of the provinces of the Persian Empire,” and it comes near the…
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Anish Kapoor Understands Why Young Muslims Might Join ISIS
Anish Kapoor is used to having ugliness added to his work. In 2018, Kapoor, the artist responsible for “Sky Mirror” and “Ark Nova,” sued the National Rifle Association for using his sculpture “Cloud Gate” in an advertisement accused of stoking fear and division. But while he succeeded in getting the NRA to remove the unauthorized…
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Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part Two: Nadezhda Mandelstam
When it came to Nadezhda Mandelstam, the scholar Clarence Brown might have put it best: She was a “vinegary, Brechtian, steel-hard woman of great intelligence, limitless courage, no illusions, permanent convictions and a wild sense of the absurdity of life.” Or perhaps it was the poet Seamus Heaney, who wrote of Mandelstam’s transformation into a…
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Lou Reed’s Archive Arrives At The Library For The Performing Arts
To browse the stacks at the New York Public Library is to take a walk on the mild side. But as of March 15, when The Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center opened its Lou Reed Archive, that’s changed. The archive comprises over 600 hours of live recordings, demos and interviews of the…
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Filmmaker Alison Klayman On Her Year With Steve Bannon
Alison Klayman is an accomplished and decorated documentarian. Her filmography includes the award-winning “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” (2012), which followed the titular Chinese activist and artist, and “Take Your Pills” (2018), an expose on Adderall addiction. But none of her ambitious and intimate films could prepare her for her latest subject. In “The Brink,” which…
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Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part One: Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen can be difficult to read. The content of what she wrote isn’t the issue; her subjects could be grim, yes, but in a way that demands rather than repels attention. But Olsen’s visceral prose — her willingness to adopt a character’s perspective so fully as to surrender lucidity — can be a barrier….
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The Secret Jewish History Of Hawaii
There once was a land ruled by a King David. And unto the king from beyond the land came a wise man who was learned in the traditions of an ancient, foreign people; skilled at fortune-telling, and able to read the stars. The king took a liking to the man and spent many hours alone…
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Theater Purim in Paris: Rachel Félix and the Paradox of French Anti-Semitism
Paris is crammed with sites of Jewish interest. While some are obvious — the shops on the Rue des Rosiers or the Holocaust memorial at Drancy — others come as more of a surprise. The Comédie-Française belongs to this latter group. The nation’s oldest state theater, founded in the 17th century under the aegis of…
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When Dublin’s Jewish Mayor Conquered Manhattan
On March 16, 1957, in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, parade bands on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue blared classic Irish tunes, while marchers carried American and Irish flags. The scene was, according to The New York Times, a “musical river of green filled with thousands of merry lads and lasses.” Fueling the excitement, the lord mayor…
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