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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Books
Jewish Groups Try To Silence Storytime Reading Of ‘P Is For Palestine’
Jewish groups have issued a legal threat against a public library in New Jersey if librarians proceed with a public reading of a book called “P is for Palestine,” the Bridgewater Courier News reported Monday. The two groups – the Central Jersey Jewish Public Affairs Committee and the Zachor Legal Institute, a legal group that…
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‘Big Mouth’ Mouths Off To Anti-Semites In Its Third Season
The new season of Netflix’s “Big Mouth,” the subversive-in-the-extreme sex-ed show about middle schoolers’ animated adventures in puberty, features the following: The ghost of Harry Houdini; a mist of vape smoke blown into the shape of a Magen David; Neo-Nazis and falsely philo-Semitic Evangelicals; a Passover episode involving incest; a bachelorette party game where you…
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The Classical Trouble With Daniel Mendelsohn
Ecstasy and Terror By Daniel Mendelsohn New York Review Books, 378 pp, $18.95 With Daniel Mendelsohn, there’s always a classics analogy. Magazine editors, let us say, then, are like Roman emperors: the longer their reigns, the more frantic the reshuffling of power that follows. Robert B. Silvers edited The New York Review of Books from…
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From the Archives: Sukkot Through the Ages
Before Jews could post about #Sukkot on Instagram, they saw it documented in our pages. From tenements in New York to small towns in Poland and Algeria, the Forward’s cameras have roamed the world for over a century, capturing the observance of ancient rites in growing Jewish communities. This year, we’ve combed the archives to…
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From The Archive: Portrait Of Harold Bloom As A Young Man
It’s hard to imagine the legendary literary critic Harold Bloom, who died Monday at the age of 89, as a young man. This was largely by design. Bloom playfully projected the aura of a musty, Falstaffian ancient. But, before he became an expert on the English canon, his first language was Yiddish, and like many…
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Why Those Arrested Giuliani Associates Were Talking About Anatevka
The saga of the two Soviet-born associates of Rudy Giuliani, arrested last week for alleged campaign finance violations, has a head-scratching footnote connected to both Yiddishkeit and a classic American Broadway musical. As the news of the indictments of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman spread, so did a video of the two men lounging with…
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Remembering Harold Bloom — Lover Of Literature, Defender Of The Western Canon
Harold Bloom, the American Jewish literary critic, has died at the age of 89. During his extremely prolific career, his audience was split between adulation and obloquy. His landmark books speak for themselves, including “The Anxiety of Influence” (1973),, “A Map of Misreading” (1975), “Agon (1982), “Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the…
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This Sukkot, This Artist Invited Superheroes To His Sukkah
Every Sukkot, families with sukkahs invite the spirits of the seven biblical matriarchs and patriarchs into their tent. These guests – or ushpizin – cut impressive figures. While we earthly chosen spend our time schmoozing outdoors, kvetching and noshing and pontificating on all manner of mundane things, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel…
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125 Years Later, The Dreyfus Affair Remains Unfortunately Relevant
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, on the morning of October 15, 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a staff member of the French military high command, kissed his wife and children good-bye at their Paris apartment. Neither he nor his family suspected they would not again see one another for four years. Ordered to report to…
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From Poland To The USSR To Iran To Israel: A Holocaust Story
Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey By Mikhal Dekel W.W. Norton & Company, 417 pages, $27.95 It was the prompting of an Iranian-American colleague at the City College of New York that stirred Mikhal Dekel’s interest in her family’s Holocaust narrative of flight, hardship and survival. Dekel’s initial idea was to collaborate on a book…
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Should We Mourn WBAI? Or Did That Time Pass Long Ago?
Is it time to say Kaddish for WBAI — or should we summon some rabbis to exorcise it? The legendary listener-supported radio station, once a counter-cultural institution that actually had an impact on the culture, finally lost its voice earlier this week. After decades of declining audience and financial support, the Pacifica Foundation, which acquired…
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