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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The Secret Jewish History of Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur, who died on this day in 1996 at the age of 25, may seem an unlikely candidate for consideration in our pages. At one time, Vice President Dan Quayle said Shakur’s music “has no place in our society”; Shakur was a convicted felon who in a few years was in and out of…
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Venice Audiences Horrified By ‘Painted Bird’ Film
Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel “The Painted Bird” has never been a story for the faint of heart. Following a young boy’s brutal tale of survival during the Holocaust in a vague Eastern European locale, the book includes sequences of incest, rape, murder and the terrible pecking-related death of the titular bird. Now, a film adaptation…
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Film & TV Charlotte Gainsbourg: Not Your Typical Jewish Mother
Charlotte Gainsbourg, 48, has little doubt that, over the course of her career, she has chosen, consciously or unconsciously, “transgressive” projects to compensate for her shyness. “So perhaps that’s why I am attracted to the unexpected,” she said during an interview. She has a soft voice with the hint of a British accent. “Also, I…
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Bruce Lee? Yes. Shammai? Yup. The Talmud Meets Kung Fu In A New Play
In a dramatic episode in the Gemara, the part of the Talmud containing rabbinical commentary on the Mishnah, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai is smuggled out of the walls of besieged Jerusalem in a coffin. Once free of the city, the rabbi encounters the general Vespasian in a Roman camp and misidentifies him as “king.” Providence…
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Does Roman Polanski’s New Film Make The Dreyfus Affair About Him?
Since it was first announced, Roman Polanski’s new film about the Dreyfus Affair, his first since the #MeToo movement began, has been raising eyebrows. “An Officer and a Spy (J’Accuse),” retells the story of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, whose wrongful 1894 conviction for treason sparked a decade-long controversy that became a flashpoint of French…
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The Secret Jewish History of Pink Floyd
Try as hard as they might, Pink Floyd is the band that refuses to die. The group’s founder and original visionary, Syd Barrett, called it quits in 1968, and by any rights it should have ended there. Yet the group has survived the loss of two frontmen and other founding members, and has endured changing…
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Q&A: How The Israeli Baseball Team Bested The Skeptics
Is there any greater underdog story than that of the Jews? How about the Israeli baseball team? In 2017, 28 American Jewish pro ball players — some retired, some in career slumps — packed their bats to play in the World Baseball Classic in Seoul. They were 200-1 projected losers; they ended up sweeping the…
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The Secret Jewish History Of James Bond
Editor’s Note: George Lazenby, who gained fame for playing the role of James Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” turns 80 today. In his honor, we present our own history of James Bond. It’s hard to imagine anyone less Jewish — or more goyish — than James Bond: He of the shaken-not-stirred-martinis; he who…
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Richard Linklater Is Making Sondheim’s ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ — It Will Take 20 Years
Richard Linklater has had a weird and varied career. He’s given us tender-hearted indie two-handers with his “Before” trilogy. He’s given us broad family comedy with “School of Rock” and the remake of “Bad News Bears.” He’s given us roto-scoped reflections on dreams in “Waking Life” and coming of age campus dramedies with “Dazed and…
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In ‘Mr. Klein,’ A Dark Document Of The French Occupation Muddled By A Story Of Obsession
On July 16, 1942, Paris lost its Jews. They disappeared in what became known as the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vel’ D’Hiv) Roundup, named for the indoor bicycle racing track where the bulk of a reported 13,152 Jews were detained as they awaited transfer by cattle car to Auschwitz. This mass arrest by the French authorities, at…
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Netanyahu Calls ‘Our Boys’ Anti-Semitic, Urges Boycott Of Network That Airs It
The HBO and Keshet Studios-produced series “Our Boys,” which recounts the 2014 revenge murder of a Palestinian teenager by Orthodox Jews, continues to generate controversy — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slammed the show and called for a boycott of Keshet. “The propaganda Channel 12 [Keshet’s station in Israel] produced an anti-Semitic series called…
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