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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Books In the Italian city where James Joyce wrote ‘Ulysses’ a Jewish poet’s bookstore rises back to life
In 1919, Umberto Saba opened an antiquarian bookstore; a century later, the people of Trieste saved it
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Here’s Why History Matters
Even Rupert Murdoch can’t take it any more. “We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board declared last week, under the headline, “Trump’s Cracked Afghan History.” Until then, the paper had managed to suck it up. It had held its tongue when Trump was…
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Lin-Manuel Miranda And The ‘Hamilton’ Team Buy New York’s Drama Book Shop
In the world of preposterous Manhattan rents, many small businesses have no control over who lives, who dies or who tells their story. For the Drama Book Shop, a Midtown institution dating back to 1916 (though the signage mistakenly says 1917), a crew of dramatic patriots is trying to control the narrative and protect the…
The Latest
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Film & TV What Does The Bible Say About #FijiWaterGirl And The Jews?
Well before our people sighted the tropic climes of Fiji, plumbed its waters for bottling and produced a photo-bombing icon, we were debating the nature of selling H20. As reported earlier, Fiji Water’s shifty business practices ought not be forgotten, but what does scripture have to say about them? To learn the answer, the Forward…
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This ‘Godot’ Uses Yiddish To Speak Up For Refugees
“Waiting For Godot,” the play that launched Samuel Beckett’s theatrical career and the era of the Theater of the Absurd, has a long polyglot history. Composed by an Irishman in French in 1948 and 1949, (Beckett had spent the Second World War in France as a member of the Resistance), the play first premiered in…
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Amos Oz: Israel’s Melancholy Visionary
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I only had the opportunity to meet Amos Oz, the distinguished Israeli author who passed away on December 28 at the age of 79, on one occasion. It was in 2004, in Philadelphia. I was then on a Jewish Studies fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, having…
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What The Hell Is ‘The Kominsky Method’?
The biggest winner at last night’s Golden Globes is a show you might have missed. Netting a Best Actor award for Michael Douglas and a Best Musical or Comedy Series statuette for creator Chuck Lorre, “The Kominsky Method” is leaving many people asking, “What the hell is that?” Well, it’s a new Netflix series starring…
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Film & TV Don’t Let Fiji Water Girl Distract You — Fiji Water Is Super Shady
Who won this year’s red carpet at the Golden Globes? If you ask the internet, it was Kelleth Cuthbert, aka “Fiji Water girl,” a raven-haired model in a blue dress who was discreetly intrusive in offering parched celebs Fiji Water from a tray. While we can all have fun with the pretension of the bottled…
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Edgar Hilsenrath, Provocative Holocaust Novelist, Dies At 92
Edgar Hilsenrath, a German Holocaust survivor and novelist celebrated for his trenchant and satirical books on genocide and life in the Jewish ghetto, passed away Sunday at a hospital in Wittlich, Germany. He was 92. Hilsenrath was born April 2, 1926 in Liepzig to David Hilsenrath, a furrier, and Anna Hilsenrath, née Honigsberg. As he…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Captain And Tennille
In the more obscure corners of the Internet, one occasionally comes across a reference to Daryl Dragon, best known as the “Captain” in the 1970s pop group Captain and Tennille, as being half-Italian and half-Jewish. This is probably because Dragon — who died earlier this week at age 76 in Prescott, Arizona — was the…
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In Italy, A Famous Museum Is Shaming Germany For Keeping Nazi-Looted Art
The painting hung for over a century in a Florentine palace, framed against a wall covered in red silk. Petite and extraordinarily detailed, the 18th-century work shows full-blown roses and peonies spilling from a vase, surrounded by a tangle of leaves and smaller flowers. The scene suggests opulence, pleasure, ease. But the recent history of…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt packed at least three lifetimes into his relatively short one: He died 100 years ago, on January 6, at age 60. Widely regarded as one of the greatest presidents in American history (with a bust on Mount Rushmore as proof), Roosevelt was a bestselling author; a historian; a naval strategist; a conservationist (as…
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Music In 1964, when he was just 23, Bob Dylan wrote the prophetic anthem that encapsulates Trump’s America
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Fast Forward It was a historic Jewish night at the Oscars. Why are so many Jews outraged?
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Film & TV Mikey Madison is Jewish — is ‘Anora’?
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Opinion Trump’s treasury secretary is about to make a catastrophically bad move on Israel
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward ICE arrests Palestinian protest leader at Columbia, in sharp escalation of campus actions
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Books Two middle-aged women defied the Nazis. One ‘wrote’ a book that betrayed the other.
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Fast Forward What does the election of Mark Carney mean for Canadian Jews and Israel?
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Culture Why are Jews buried in a plain pine coffin?
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