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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Film & TV
‘Game Of Thrones’ Made Headlines For A Starbucks Cup. Were The Showrunners To Blame?
With “Game of Thrones” arriving at an unsatisfying end, fans have been quick to pin the blame on showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. If the timing of the hit show’s eighth season felt rushed, the character beats unconvincing or the conclusion a bit confused, it makes sense that the pair, who wrote the final…
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How Four Women Told The World About The Nazis’ Medical Experiments
In January of 1943, four Polish political prisoners in Ravensbrück, a women-only Nazi concentration camp in northern Germany, wrote letters to their families. Inmates were allowed to write one letter per month, missives that the SS strictly censored. The four women escaped suspicion by banally describing life in the camps as pleasant. But in truth,…
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How Hulu’s ‘Catch-22’ Lost The Spirit Of Joseph Heller’s Masterpiece
Everything you need to know about the Hulu adaptation of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” comes down to a scream. In the opening moments of the new six-part miniseries, which debuted on May 17, Captain John Yossarian (Christopher Abbott) pads down a runway, naked as the day he was born, with blood caked on his face. Behind…
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Remembering Herman Wouk’s Bestselling Confidence And Modesty
In the annals of best-selling authors, modesty is a rare element. The American Jewish writer Herman Wouk, who has died at the age of 103, is a happy exception to this rule. Despite his fame for the novel, play, and filmed versions of the “Caine Mutiny,”, “The Winds of War,” and “Marjorie Morningstar,” Wouk repeatedly…
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Why My Father Wouldn’t Let Me Read Marjorie Morningstar
When I was a young teenager in the late 1970s, my father forbade me to read “Marjorie Morningstar,” Herman Wouk’s 1955 novel chronicling the eponymous Marjorie’s coming of age in the 1930s. Marjorie, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who worked their way out of the Bronx and to Manhattan’s Upper West Side,…
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Remembering Herman Wouk: “Why I Had To Go To Germany”
Editors note: One of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century, Herman Wouk — author of “Marjorie Morningstar,” “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” and “The Lawgiver” — has died at the age of 103. In this excerpt from “Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author,” Wouk explains how encountering historian Raul Hilberg helped…
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For Adrienne Rich, On Her 90th Birthday
At some point in your life, you will likely hear the maxim that the personal is political. Afterward, you will look at the paraphernalia of your existence, and wonder which parts, exactly, are covered by that idea. Your routine when you wake up? What you choose to cook? What you say when you greet a…
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Is ‘Catch-22’ About Joseph Heller’s Jewish Air Force Peer?
In spirit if not content, Joseph Heller’s World War II satire “Catch 22” (1961) is a very Jewish property. When Mike Nichols directed the 1970 film adaptation of the novel, he cast fellow Yid Alan Arkin as the lead character, Captain John Yossarian, a defiant air force officer who tries to end his flying days…
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As Opioid Lawsuits Pile Up, Met Decides To Refuse Money From Sacklers
In a landmark development, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a decades-long connection to the Sackler family, the primary owners of Purdue Pharma, has decided to refuse future donations from family members connected to the business. The move follows the Met’s previously announced plan to reconsider its donor policy after a Massachusetts court…
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A Harvard Magazine Made A Sex Joke About Anne Frank. It Wasn’t Just Offensive — It Was Boring.
You can see why the staff of the Harvard Lampoon found the idea funny. Photoshop Anne Frank’s head onto the body of a woman showing off a belly button piercing and surgically augmented breasts in a string bikini. Make sure a sufficient number of shirtless men in the background are staring appreciatively at her. And…
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Film & TV WATCH: Is Robert DeNiro’s New Ad Complicit In The Assimilation Of Bagels?
What is Jewish about Robert De Niro, Bolton, and Warburtons? On the surface, nothing. One is an actor known for primarily playing Italian-American roles. Another is a town in northwest England that once had a synagogue. And the other is a traditional English bakery firm. But what all these things have in common is the…
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