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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Romania To Open Its First Holocaust Museum
On October 8, the eve of Yom Kippur, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced plans for the country’s first Holocaust museum. The announcement comes 16 years after Romania first acknowledged its role in the Shoah, following a decades-long cover-up under the communist regimes of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and his successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Many countries under the USSR…
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For Jerome Robbins At 101: The Quintessential Jewish American Genius
On May 6, 1953, Jerome Robbins was front-page news in the Forward for an act that would haunt him for the rest of his life. An above-the-fold headline — published next to an unrelated photo of a handsome young harbor boss named Francis Kelly, who appeared to be wearing lipstick — read “Acclaimed Dancer Gives…
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The New Nobel Prize In Literature Is Scandalous. Here’s Why.
In the hours since the Swedish Academy announced Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke as newly-minted winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, much has been made of the contrast between then. Tokarczuk, the 2018 laureate — whose award comes a year late, after a scandal derailed 2018 committee’s deliberations — is a Polish novelist whose…
The Latest
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3 Jewish Stars Played On Yom Kippur — The Same Fate Befell Them All
In the end, the three prominent Jewish players who were taking part in baseball’s postseason this week all opted to play on Yom Kippur. In the end, their decisions were not really surprising. The three — Alex Bregman of the Houston Astros, Joc Pederson of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Max Fried of the Atlanta…
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Return To The Reich
“Return to the Reich” tells the story of a harrowing US espionage mission into Nazi-occupied Austria led by Freddy Mayer, who had escaped Nazi Germany for Brooklyn as a teenager in 1938. Mayer, with another Jewish refugee from Europe as his radio man on the mission, posed for weeks on the ground in Tyrol as…
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Here Are The Winners Of Israel’s National Yiddish Story Contest
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In July, Israel’s National Authority for Yiddish Culture launched the first government-sponsored Yiddish-language writing contest ever held in the Jewish state. This week, the authority announced the three winners. Ethel Niborski, age 17, won first prize for her short story “Letters to a Blind Grandfather,” for which…
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Carolyn Forché, Ilya Kaminsky Among National Book Award Finalists
Finalists for the National Book Awards, winners of which will be announced on November 20, include Ilya Kaminsky, László Krasznahorkai and Carolyn Forché. Kaminsky, a Ukrainian-born Jewish poet, is nominated for “Deaf Republic,” his second full-length poetry collection. Krasznahorkai, a Jewish Hungarian novelist, is a finalist in the category of fiction in translation, for his…
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Film & TV How I Stole Chantal Akerman’s Ideas For the Obama White House
Editor’s note: Filmmaker Chantal Akerman passed away on this date in 2015. To commemorate her life and work, we are revisiting this essay by Arun Chaudhary that speaks to Akerman’s wide-ranging impact. When I met Chantal Akerman, the famed film director whose alleged suicide was reported on October 6, I told her I was going…
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About That Time Jesus Fought Hitler On ‘Preacher’
The Platinum Age of television has given us has given us the Jesus-Hitler showdown we didn’t know we wanted — and it’s not even pay-per-view. Spoilers ahead. Last Sunday, on the series finale of “Preacher,” the Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen-produced AMC adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s comic of the same name, the…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History Of Buster Keaton
Editor’s Note: Buster Keaton was born on this day in 1895. In honor of the 124th birthday of “The Great Stone Face, we look back on Keaton’s Jewish influences and collaborators. Had it not been for Erik Weisz, the Hungarian-born, Wisconsin-raised son of a rabbi, one of the most influential film artists of all time…
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Bob Woodward Booed At Shul For Talking Over Weinstein Reporters
On October 2 at the Sixth & I synagogue in Washington, DC, celebrated investigative journalist Bob Woodward interviewed Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse story. It didn’t go so well. According to audience members who posted their reactions to social media, Woodward, whose…
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Books In three centuries of Southern Jewish life in the Big Easy, no easy way to be Jewish
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Opinion We’re forgetting the lessons of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
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