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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RBG Appears At Broadway Play About The Constitution, Drawing Tears And Cheers
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended a Saturday evening performance of Heidi Schreck’s “What The Constitution Means to Me” this weekend, prompting tears from the cast and a mid-show standing ovation from the audience. Ginsburg is perhaps known more for her love of opera than for plays, but the concern of Schreck’s Pulitzer-nominated work…
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Music Woody Guthrie’s Jewish Soul And The Tale Of A Tulsa Tallis
In the summer of 2014, on the strength of a BMI-Woody Guthrie Fellowship, I spent a glorious few weeks researching in the archives in the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The materials I found there not only fed into the writing of two books on Guthrie, but they also revealed some of the least…
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Jim Dine On His Jewish Fate And The Fate Of The Jews
The American artist Jim Dine, who will be 84 on June 16, has just produced a new book, [“Jewish Fate” (Steidl Publishers)](Steidl Publishers ““Jewish Fate” (Steidl Publishers)”) an evocation in free verse and imagery of his boyhood, working in the Cincinnati hardware store of his grandfather, Morris Cohen. Emerging from the generation of U.S. pop…
The Latest
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Film & TV Remembering Sylvia Miles — A Born Truth-Teller
The American Jewish actress Sylvia Miles, who died on June 12 at age 94, proved that Jewish truth telling can simultaneously make and break a performance career. Miles’ devotion to verisimilitude was such that even fellow thespians were deceived by her artistry. After seeing John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” (1969) one of her two Oscar-nominated performances,…
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Trump, Forgetting Jonah Incident, Admits To Talks With Prince Of Whales
On June 13, President Trump, in a quickly-deleted tweet, alluded to meetings he had with the Prince of Whales among other world leaders. Many were quick to deride Trump for seeming to misspell Prince Charles of England’s title, but those critics overlook the true gaffe — the real reason why Trump removed the tweet. Not…
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Velvel Pasternak, Champion Of Traditional Jewish Music, Dies At 86
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Velvel Pasternak, the publisher, scholar and nonpareil Jewish music historian primarily known for his expertise on the music of Hasidism, has died. He was 86 years old. Pasternak was born in Toronto, Canada into a religious family descended from the Modzitz Hasidim. At the age of 16…
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In ‘The Reports On Sarah And Saleem,’ An Affair Enters Dangerous Territory
Saleem and Sarah have a routine. In the mornings, he delivers pastries from the bakery that employs him to Sarah’s cafe. In the evenings, she drives to him in an empty parking lot and they have sex in his van. But this simple arrangement is not so simple. Both are married (Sarah has a toddler;…
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Theater WATCH: The First Trailer For ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ Documentary ‘Miracle Of Miracles’
It seems like “Fiddler” fever may never break. Hot on the heels of the Folksbiene’s Yiddish production of the Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick classic comes a documentary chronicling how the hit musical came to occupy a beloved place in the American songbook — getting there wasn’t easy. In a newly-released trailer for “Fiddler: A…
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Music The Secret Jewish History Of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue
There is a telling moment in “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” a new film by Martin Scorsese that played in theaters for one night only on June 11, before commencing to stream on Netflix on June 12. David Mansfield, who at age 19 played mandolin and pedal-steel guitar on the 1975 Rolling Thunder…
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Is This Book About ‘Global Power’ Anti-Semitic?
A book by a Spanish colonel, released in translation in the U.K. in April, contained several passages about the Rothschilds, George Soros and their purported control over global events in its original Spanish edition according to a concerned author and Twitter user. The book’s cover features grasping octopus tentacles, a regular feature of Third Reich…
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Anne Frank Would Have Turned 90 Today. We’re Still Telling Her Story.
90 years ago today, Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany. Her life was short and full of difficulty. She became an immigrant at age 4, moving to the Netherlands as her family attempted to escape the Nazis. At 13, she moved into the cramped attic, known as the Secret Annex, where she and her…
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Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
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