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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In Praise Of Ruth Rubin, Patron Saint Of Yiddish Song
Ruth Rubin was the Alan Lomax of Yiddish folk song. For over 40 years, she visited Jewish communities around the world, tape recorder in hand, assembling a collection of more than 2,000 songs, including lullabies, children’s songs, love songs, drinking songs, satirical songs, and work songs, gathered from ordinary (and some extraordinary) “informants.” Hers was…
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After 20 Years, A Bible Translation Gives Old Stories New Life
How can one find fresh nuance in an over 2,ooo-year-old book? If the book is the Hebrew Bible, by returning to the original Hebrew. After over two decades, the 83-year-old literary critic and translator Robert Alter has completed his translation of the Hebrew Bible, an undertaking that has resulted in over 3,000 pages of commentary…
The Latest
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In ‘On The Basis Of Sex,’ A Reverential Portrait Of RBG
In the opening sequence of Mimi Leder’s feature film “On the Basis of Sex,” set in 1956, swarms of men in black and grey suits march toward what turns out to be Harvard Law School. Suddenly, among those drab masculine multitudes, we spot the back of a single woman in a blue dress: our heroine,…
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Suddenly, Yiddish Theater Is Everywhere!
“Fiddler on the Roof” has made headlines of late as public figures have expressed their love for Yiddish theater. Interestingly, what brings on the love is the Yiddish language itself. Alan Dershowitz is not primarily known as a theater critic, but he was so moved by a recent Yiddish performance of “Fiddler on the Roof”…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History Of Rock Hudson
Who was the biggest male star in Hollywood in the 1950s and ‘60s? John Wayne? Too typecast in Westerns. Marlon Brando? Too weird and rebellious. James Dean? Died too young. It may be hard to remember or to imagine today, but the biggest star in Hollywood back then was a clean-cut, all-American, handsome guy named…
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From Pittsburgh To Canary Mission: Our Best Stories Of 2018
Ah, 2018: Year of political turmoil, Manhattan’s swoon of adoration over a particularly handsome duck, a doubtful detente with North Korea, the ascendancy of our queen Meghan Markle, a Supreme Court confirmation process that excavated some of the ugliest facts about sexism in America, and the Winter Olympics. (Yes, those really happened in 2018!) We…
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Disgraced German Reporter Fabricated Details In Nazi Resistance Interview
It was one of Claas Relotius’s most widely praised pieces, an interview with 99-year-old Traute Lafrenz, the last surviving member of the famous Weisse Rose (White Rose) Nazi resistance group. But when an investigation found that Relotius, 33, a star reporter at Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news magazines, had a very lax understanding…
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Susan Orlean On Her Passion For Books And Judaism
On April 29, 1986, a massive fire ripped through the Los Angeles Public Library’s central branch. During the nearly eight hours that the fire raged, temperatures reached 2,500 degrees, 350 firefighters reported to the scene, shelves collapsed,3 million gallons of water were expended, and two acres of plastic sheeting were deployed to try to salvage…
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The Doomed, Destructive Love Of Pawlikowski’s ‘Cold War’
Any good jazz performance, improvised or scored, will circle back to a theme. In “Cold War,” director Pawel Pawlikowski, the maestro behind the Oscar-winning “Ida,” about a nun who discovers her Jewish heritage, does just that. The auteur returns to the earlier film’s black and white format and a story of origins — this time…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Wilco Frontman Jeff Tweedy
If you think the most Jewish thing Jeff Tweedy ever did was to name a Wilco album “Schmilco,” think again. The truth is that Tweedy — the founder and main creative force behind the indie-rock group Wilco, celebrating its 25th anniversary next year — married a Jewish woman, raised two Jewish boys into manhood, and,…
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This Little-Known Jewish Hero Lit The Statue Of Liberty
On November 7, 1886, the guiding light of New York Harbor went dark for the first time. Only 10 days after the Statue of Liberty was unveiled to the public, her torch was snuffed. A frugal Congress refused to allocate the necessary funds for the statue to serve her role as a lighthouse. Indeed, Congress…
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