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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They were a kosher bakery success story — 80 years later, people are still trying to make a buck off their babka
The tale of Schick's Bakery is one of 20th-century ingenuity and 21st-century capitalism
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Amos Oz, On Himself
A Tale of Love and Darkness By Amos Oz Harcourt, 544 pages, $26. ——— Since 1968, when his novel “My Michael” — exquisitely narrated by a despairing young wife in Jerusalem — mesmerized thousands of readers, Amos Oz has been recognized as one of Israel’s most gifted and prolific authors. He has produced 22 books…
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Wrestling With Faith in the Land of Oz
● JEWS AND WORDS By Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger Yale University Press, 248 pages, $25 In the epilogue to “Jews and Words,” the authors raise the age-old question “Who is a Jew?” to which they respond, “Whoever is wrestling with the question ‘Who is a Jew?’” It is not an original answer, but it’s…
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Amos Oz Looks Forward — and Back
Literature was once more at the forefront of Israel’s national conversation when I met Amos Oz during the first week of January. The Education Ministry had decided to remove Dorit Rabinyan’s novel “Borderlife” from the national curriculum, on the basis that an Israeli-Palestinian love story would confuse young people’s sense of identity. Print sales skyrocketed….
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Elizabeth Wurtzel Learns Her Father Was Civil Rights Photographer Bob Adelman
Elizabeth Wurtzel, famous for “Prozac Nation” and infamous for her claim that motherhood isn’t a job, is speaking out against her mother for her failure as a parent. That failure? To tell her who her real father was. In a blistering essay for The Cut, Wurtzel reveals that she lived her life until 2015 believing…
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Larry Eisenberg, New York Times Limerick King, Dies At 99
Larry Eisenberg, commenter supreme, Has passed away, it would seem As recorded in The Times, Which he graced with his lines, His daughter reports she’s bereaved. With his limericks sublime, Eisenberg was 99, A biomedical engineer And Sci-Fi writer who endeared, He was truly one of a kind. Born to parents Sidney and Yetta, Larry…
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Dear Men: Dating You Is Hell
Dear Men, I regret to inform you that I am unavailable to date you at this time. Thank you for your interest in dating me — and for the more than 3 billion of you who have never expressed interest in dating me, thank you for what I can only imagine would be your interest…
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Music Klezmer Revivalists Hail The Lords Of The ‘Tanz!’
In 1955, just when klezmer was about to end its half-century-long run as a viable commercial and creative outlet for immigrant-era Jewish musicians and a few younger instrumentalists who took up their torch, the great Ukrainian-born clarinetist Dave Tarras recorded one more album at the urging and with the creative guidance of his son-in-law, Sam…
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What Do A Jewish Broadway King And Pablo Escobar Have In Common? This Dalí Painting
A Jewish theater impresario, an infamous Colombian drug lord and a Japanese businessman are connected by a curious dance of life and death – more specifically “The Dance” a 1957 painting by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. The New York Times reports that the chain of ownership of the artwork, which depicts two twisted, faceless figures…
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Yes, Prince Charles Jams Out To Leonard Cohen
For all his royal trappings, Prince Charles is still a 70-year-old white man. And like many 70-year-old white men, he loves the music of the late Leonard Cohen. In a new special for BBC Radio 3’s “Private Passions,” where well-known Brits draw up playlists of songs they’ve found to be formative, the Prince of Wales…
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The Navy Is Disciplining Sailors With Ayn Rand (Yes, Really)
The Russian-Jewish novelist Ayn Rand’s books are many things: A surprisingly formative force in modern conservatism, the subject of the hilarious scorn of Nora Ephron, something your high school boyfriend felt, like, really passionate about, alarmingly attractive to Rand Paul and unconscionably long. Now, as the United States Navy seeks more humane forms of discipline,…
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News Media Should Democratize Presidential Debates — Not Monetize Them
The CBS board may have fired Les Moonves for misleading them about sex, but he did call it straight about money, media and politics. “Trump’s run may not be good for America,” he told a conference of investment bankers in 2016, “but it’s damn good for CBS.” The campaign may be a “circus,” he said,…
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