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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Why Hummus Is Key To Understanding Jewish Identity
To honor International Hummus Day, we revisit the Sabra Hummus factory, and learn some surprising truths about the origins of the fabled chickpea dish. Three blue cornflowers, stenciled on white ceramic — for the 18 years I spent growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, that was my family’s emblem of hummus. The CorningWare dish, wide…
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Why Is The Cannes Film Festival Honoring This Ally Of French Anti-Semitism?
This year’s Cannes Film Festival, starting May 14, will honor the French film star Alain Delon with a Palme d’honneur prize for acting, a lifetime achievement award that has previously gone to such performers as Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Delon, now 83, has played a hired killer in “The Samurai” (1967) directed…
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The Extraordinary Life Of Leopold Kozlowski, The Last Klezmer Of Galicia
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Leopold Kozlowski, the last active musician to have grown up playing traditional Jewish music in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, died March 12 in Krakow at the age of 100. A world-renowned expert on Jewish music and a teacher who trained generations of klezmer musicians and Yiddish…
The Latest
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Why The Rock ‘N’ Roll Faithful Are Flocking to The Met
To enter “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” — an exhibition currently running at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art through October 1 — you must first walk through a Met gallery devoted to Greek art from the 5th century BC. Jarring as it may be to hear the strains of Chuck Berry’s…
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Nelson Mandela, Iconic Leader for Jews of South Africa — and World
On this day, 25 years ago, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president. In honor of that anniversary, we are revisiting Richard Goldstone’s essay that he wrote on the occasion of Mandela’s passing in 2013. Nelson Mandela has become a beloved icon for all of South Africa, and no less for its…
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How Eli Valley’s Art Started An Anti-Semitism Scandal At Stanford
It began on Thursday, May 2, when members of the Stanford chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) posted flyers with cartoons by Eli Valley, a Jewish political cartoonist known for his provocative drawings of right-wing and Jewish figures. Soon after, Nazi-era propaganda appeared in freshman dorms. By May 7 one of The New…
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At Riveting Auschwitz Exhibition, Troubling Lessons For Today’s America
Before I went to see “Auschwitz, Not Long Ago, Not Far Away,” a massive show at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, I had never set foot in a Holocaust exhibit. I didn’t want the inevitable manipulative clichés of exhibit design — dramatically lit artifacts set against wall-sized photo murals of emaciated people in striped pajamas…
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Elizabeth Warren Wants To Scrub Sackler Name From Harvard Campus
Massachusetts Senator and 2020 presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has officially voiced support for removing the Sackler name from buildings at Harvard University. Warren, a former law professor at Harvard, told CNN of her position through an aide on Wednesday. The Sackler family are both the majority owners of Purdue Pharma, which manufactures the opioid OxyContin,…
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He Translated One Of The Greatest Modern Yiddish Writers — And Didn’t Know
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Harold Rabinowitz likes to say that when he pulled into the driveway at the Beacon Inn in Brookline, Massachusetts, his life became like “something from the movies.” It was winter 1979. Rabinowitz, or Heshie, as he calls himself, was a pulpit rabbi in nearby Malden and a…
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Film & TV Baby Archie Of Sussex Will Never Be Archie Andrews Of Riverdale
On the afternoon of May 8, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex revealed the name of their baby on Instagram: Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. It’s a cute name, but I’m unable to accept it. While there’s a long tradition of British Archibalds, among them the many Scottish Lords of Douglas – the same ones that often…
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I Didn’t Want To Fall For Israel — Confessions Of A Millennial Jew
I remember it like this: It was the turn of the century. There was an uprising. I had just learned how to read. It was an odd time to take children to Israel. The country had become a bloody backdrop against which cafes and buses exploded, flinging scraps of human flesh into the air. We…
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