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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Film & TV ‘Mrs. Maisel Is Just As Good — And Just As Annoying — The Second Time Around
Oy vey! We had to wipe a little shmutz off our tchotchkes, but you better bissel–gornisht–treyf believe it — the second season of Amazon Prime’s smash-hit show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is just as bagel as ever. Jews! If you enjoy the tempo of crack-cocaine addicts, or podcasts played at 2x speed, you will enjoy the…
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Art The Art Institute Of Chicago’s New Website Has Over 50K Public Domain Artworks — Here’s What’s Jewish
The trouble with museums is they tend to stay in one place. While any museum’s permanent collection makes up the bulk of the institution’s bragging rights, those of us who don’t live near the Louvre, MOMA or the Art Institute of Chicago don’t have ready access to the masterpieces on display. Luckily for us, that…
The Latest
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History of ‘The White Shadow’
Forty years ago this fall, an unassuming yet groundbreaking CBS-TV series called “The White Shadow,” about an inner-city high-school basketball team coached by a former white NBA player, made its debut, bringing the realities of racism, alcoholism, drugs, gang violence, domestic violence, student violence against teachers, student sex with teachers, teen pregnancy, teen death, sexually…
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The World Set Rules For Returning Nazi-Looted Art. Are They Working?
In November, the Austrian government revealed that nearly two decades ago it returned the wrong Nazi-looted Gustav Klimt painting to the wrong Jewish family. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is working to return cultural items looted by colonialists to their African countries of origin. Elaborate, precise heists are targeting Chinese artifacts in museums across the globe,…
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Art Can Virtual Reality Bring Palestinians And Jews Closer Together?
Raji Sabateen, 56, lives in the village of Husan in the Palestinian West Bank, a place where few Israelis dare to visit. But over the past five months, thousands of Israelis have spent time inside Sabateen’s home through the power of virtual reality. Sabateen’s home is featured at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum as part of “Eye…
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Film & TV Chronicles Of John Garfield’s Death Foretold In His Final Film
As in his earlier hit “Body and Soul” (1948), John Garfield’s final film “He Ran All the Way” (1951) begins with the actor waking up from an apparently very unpleasant dream. While the return from a nightmare is not an uncommon twist in those older Hollywood movies that veer into darker territory — the familiar…
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Should Linda Fairstein’s Involvement In The Central Park Five Case Keep Her From A Mystery Writing Award?
Mystery novels can be morally dubious. They often use horrific incidents to entertain and sometimes to titillate their readers. We can continue to enjoy them without too much compunction, however, knowing that the events are made up. So what happens when someone who supervised a real-world miscarriage of justice is being honored for her work…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History Of SpongeBob Squarepants
On November 26 Stephen Hillenburg, the unassuming marine biologist who reached millions with his cartoon creation SpongeBob Squarepants passed away from complications of ALS. Hillenburg was 57. Eternally optimistic, absorbent, yellow and porous, Hillenburg’s signature creation truly needs no introduction, nor does his permanent residence in a pineapple under the sea. But how did such…
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Stephen Miller High School Clips Prove Some Folks Don’t Ever Grow Up
Almost none of us want reminders of our high school years made public. Then again most of us have some shame, something Stephen Miller, the man at the forefront of Trump’s most draconian immigration policies, appears to be lacking. On a November 25 episode of Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix series “Patriot Act,” which focused on immigration…
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Theater Folksbiene To Follow ‘Fiddler’ With Premiere Of Opera About The Rise Of The Nazis
Erich Rosenthal, a Jewish scholar, watched the rise of the Nazis from the United States. He’d managed to escape his native Germany, but his family wasn’t so lucky. Now his son, the composer Ted Rosenthal, is poised to give new voice to the tormented years his father spent praying for his family from afar. In…
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Aaron Sorkin Doesn’t Seem To Know Why His ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Should Exist Either
Aaron Sorkin began his career with a staged courtroom drama, “A Few Good Men,” and is entering into a controversial late period with another. Like his biblical namesake, Sorkin has taken on a sacred cow, adapting Harper Lee’s beloved novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the Broadway stage. It’s a task he referred to in…
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Fast Forward Benjamin Netanyahu to meet Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 4
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Fast Forward Will the freezing of federal grants impact synagogue security?
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