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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In a Kraków Basement, Awkward Objects of Genocide
At the entrance to the temporary exhibition in Esterka’s House, a branch of the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków, there is a photograph of the collections storage of the Warsaw State Ethnographic Museum. The photograph shows rows of densely populated shelves: in the space of just a few cubic meters, hundreds of hand-carved figurines are consorting….
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125 Years Later, The Dreyfus Affair Remains Unfortunately Relevant
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, on the morning of October 15, 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a staff member of the French military high command, kissed his wife and children good-bye at their Paris apartment. Neither he nor his family suspected they would not again see one another for four years. Ordered to report to…
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How To Capture The Nuances Of Torah — In Braille
Recently, I unexpectedly found myself in an elegant hotel ballroom in Virginia, discussing Yehuda Amichai’s iconic poem “The Diameter of a Bomb” with a deaf and blind poet. As the poet and his interpreters communicated in Pro-Tactile American Sign Language — an emerging language using touch to convey sign language, much in the way that…
The Latest
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The Best New Haggadot And The Best Of All Time
I’ve been tracking the release of new haggadot for the Forward for eleven years now. I’ve reviewed the good, the bad, the overproduced, the underappreciated. (Some of my all-time favorites are listed at the end.) And over the years, it’s been remarkable to observe how the production of haggadot each year reflects the continued vitality…
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Amazon Blames Woody Allen For 4-Picture Deal Contract Break
Amazon Studios responded to Woody Allen’s $68 million breach of contract lawsuit Wednesday night, claiming his public comments about #MeToo justified the termination of their deal. In February, Allen sued the e-store’s film division, claiming they had improperly broken their agreement based on an allegation by his daughter Dylan Farrow that Allen molested her in…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History Of ‘Dumbo’
Tim Burton’s remake for Disney of “Dumbo” about an elephant whose oversized ears enable him to fly, has received mixed reviews. Some filmgoers prefer the classic 1941 version, also from Disney. Yet indisputably, the story for both originated in a book published in 1939 by Helen Aberson (1907-1999), a Syracuse-born writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin….
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Film & TV Zionist, Author, Screenwriter, Newspaper Man: The Inimitable Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures By Adina Hoffman Yale University Press, 232 pages, $26 In 1947 Mickey Cohen, the Los Angeles crime boss, paid a visit to Ben Hecht, the journalist, screenwriter and propagandist for a Jewish state, to ask how he might best support Jews in Palestine. When the mobster and his henchmen…
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Music WATCH: Laurie Anderson Read Emma Lazarus’s ‘The New Colossus’
The weathered words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty endure to this day, even though most immigrants no longer encounter them on their journey. But the sonnet “The New Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus, is only the poet’s most visible contribution to literature. This year, the American Jewish Historical Society, the steward of…
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Remembering Avram Lyon’s Holistic Approach to Jewish Life
Avram “Avi” Lyon, who died on April 1 at age 76, was more than just a labor activist defending the rights of downtrodden workers. He epitomized a holistic approach to Jewish ethics and culture. With crystalline clarity, he linked Jewish ethics as an indissociable element of Jewish ritual. As former head of Jewish Labor Committee,…
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When Americans Thought Hitler Had Been Killed — In 1939
On April 1, 1939, Hitler was in a very bad mood. The previous day the Führer had learned that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had grown something resembling a spine. After reversing Britain’s policy of appeasement on March 15, following Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia, on March 31 Chamberlain made a pledge of Anglo-French support to…
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Film & TV NYPD ‘Actively Investigating’ David Blaine After Sexual Assault Accusations
The New York Police Department is investigating magician David Blaine after two women accused him of sexual assault. In a news conference April 1, Dermot F. Shea, the department’s chief of detectives confirmed the investigation into the complaints, first reported by The Daily Beast. Shea refused to comment on the details of the allegations or…
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