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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Edgar Hilsenrath, Provocative Holocaust Novelist, Dies At 92
Edgar Hilsenrath, a German Holocaust survivor and novelist celebrated for his trenchant and satirical books on genocide and life in the Jewish ghetto, passed away Sunday at a hospital in Wittlich, Germany. He was 92. Hilsenrath was born April 2, 1926 in Liepzig to David Hilsenrath, a furrier, and Anna Hilsenrath, née Honigsberg. As he…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Captain And Tennille
In the more obscure corners of the Internet, one occasionally comes across a reference to Daryl Dragon, best known as the “Captain” in the 1970s pop group Captain and Tennille, as being half-Italian and half-Jewish. This is probably because Dragon — who died earlier this week at age 76 in Prescott, Arizona — was the…
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In Italy, A Famous Museum Is Shaming Germany For Keeping Nazi-Looted Art
The painting hung for over a century in a Florentine palace, framed against a wall covered in red silk. Petite and extraordinarily detailed, the 18th-century work shows full-blown roses and peonies spilling from a vase, surrounded by a tangle of leaves and smaller flowers. The scene suggests opulence, pleasure, ease. But the recent history of…
The Latest
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The Future Of Judaism Will Need A Big Tent
The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World By Robert H. Mnookin PublicAffairs, 308 pages, $28 Robert H. Mnookin, who is a professor at Harvard Law School and chairs its Program on Negotiation, has gotten the “changing world” part of his subtitle right. Writing before last October’s deadly anti-Semitism-inspired attack on congregants at…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt packed at least three lifetimes into his relatively short one: He died 100 years ago, on January 6, at age 60. Widely regarded as one of the greatest presidents in American history (with a bust on Mount Rushmore as proof), Roosevelt was a bestselling author; a historian; a naval strategist; a conservationist (as…
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Film & TV A Theater Gave Far-Right Germans Free Tickets To ‘Schindler’s List’ — And It Backfired
Last month, members of Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany’s major far-right party and the largest opposition group in the country’s legislature, were offered a curious Christmas gift: Free tickets to “Schindler’s List.” They weren’t thrilled. As The New York Times reports, Cinexx, an independent theater in Hachenburg, declared it would give free admission for a…
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Film & TV All The Jewish And Jew-Ish Things That Are Public Domain In 2019
Sonny Bono was one half of the folk duo Sonny & Cher, a Republican Congressman from California and the wearer of a notable mustache. He’s less well-known for his connection to copyright law. In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, sponsored and named by his widow, Congresswoman Mary Bono, who took her late…
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Film & TV Actor Bob Einstein, Known For Super Dave And ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ Dies At 76
Bob Einstein, a staple of sketch, scripted and improvised comedy for five decades died on January 2, 2019, at the age of 76. The New York Times reports that Einstein’s manager, Lee Kernis, confirmed that the comedian had been battling cancer. Einstein, the son of comedian Harry Einstein and actress and singer Thelma Leeds, was…
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In An Era Of Faux News, Let’s Set The Record Straight On Vichy France
The State Versus The Jews By Laurent Joly Grasset, 368 pages, 20,90 € In 1994, the French historians Henry Rousso and Éric Conan published “Vichy, un Passé Qui ne Passe pas.” While titled “Vichy: The Ever-Present Past” in the excellent American translation, the phrase nevertheless has a slightly different resonance in the original French. The…
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Mussolini’s Willing Executioners: The Genocide Of Italy’s Jews
The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews in Italy By Simon Levis Sullam Princeton University Press, 208 pages, $26.95 In the cultural geography of the Shoah, Italy doesn’t take up much space. Our imagination turns instead to Germany and Poland. This is for good reason, of course, as the Shoah was a German initiative…
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How Judaism Can Survive Amid A Gazillion Contradictions
The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today By Jack Wertheimer Princeton University Press, 400 pages, $29.95 In “The New American Judaism,” Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary and the author of “A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America,” draws on interviews with 200 rabbis, survey…
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