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 Philip Roth’s New York Apartment: Hints Of How He Spent His Final Years
You could now live in Philip Roth’s two-story New York condo – but it will cost you. The late author’s apartment on West 79th Street, where he spent much of his later years, is now listed for $3.2 million, Mansion Global reported. It appears that the roughly 1,500 square foot two bedroom, combined from two…
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2020 Hopeful Pete Buttigieg Won An Award For This Essay On Bernie Sanders In High School
37-year-old South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a longshot presidential candidate in an already crowded Democratic field. At press time he’s still jockeying for the 65,000 individual donors needed to qualify for the first round of Democratically-sponsored debates in June. Meanwhile, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has raised $10 million for his campaign less than…
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7 Questions For Barry Avrich, Director Of ‘Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World Of Ben Ferencz’
Only a day after he learned about Ben Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, filmmaker Barry Avrich was in contact and getting ready to make a documentary about him. The resulting film, “Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz,” now playing at New York’s Cinema Village and opening in select cities Friday March 1,…
The Latest
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Mapped In Recipes, A Savage Landscape Of Jewish Hunger
A few years after I learned to read, I encountered a formative image in one of Sydney Taylor’s “All of a Kind Family” books. I remember it with absolute clarity: A daughter admires her mother’s figure, unique among the Eastern European Jewish women of the Lower East Side. They tend, she thinks, to look like…
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Film & TV ‘Green Book’ Got Racism Wrong; This 1964 Film Got It Right
You may have heard that people are upset about “Green Book” winning the 2019 Oscar for Best Movie. Or you may have seen Spike Lee, whose “BlackKklansman” was also up for the award, drain a full glass of champagne rather than respond to a question about what he thought of the film’s victory. The “Green…
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Music What You Need To Know About R. Kelly’s Lawyer, Steve Greenberg
R. Kelly’s latest legal case was never going to be a low profile affair. The “Trapped in the Closet” singer, whose real name is Robert Kelly, was arrested in Chicago Friday, February 22, on charges of aggravated sexual abuse spanning over a decade and involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time,…
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At 95, the heroes of the Ghost Army relive the battles of WWII
The 603rd Camouflage Engineers used inflatable tanks, planes and more to dupe the Germans
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The Secret Jewish History Of Peter Tork
Peter Tork, who died on February 21 at age 77, proved that enduring pop stardom was less meaningful than the quest to understand oneself and the world. Tork won international acclaim as the keyboardist and bass guitarist of the Monkees. His mother Virginia Straus had German Jewish roots, and Tork would include Yiddish phrases in…
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‘Porgy And Bess,’ ‘Akhnaten’ To Lead Met Opera’s 2019-2020 Season
After almost three decades, the Charleston-set “Porgy and Bess” is coming back to the Upper West Side. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2019-2020 season, announced on February 20, will open on September 23 with a new production of Ira and George Gershwin’s folk opera, the first since 1990. The staging, brought over by director James Robinson after…
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Film & TV On Disney Channel’s ‘Andi Mack,’ Yet Another Jewish Story
“Andi Mack” was not on TV last Friday, so my evening was not as enjoyable as it usually was. Almost a year ago, I wrote about how I am a lover of shows on Disney Channel. Some people might find this odd, as I am a childless, middle-aged adult who is not a teacher. However,…
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Film & TV When New Journalism And The New Hollywood Both Died In Darkness
If you watch a lot of films, you might get the sense that journalism is a very dramatic business — there’s a reason why the Washington Post’s Trump-era slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” reads like something you might find on a movie poster. Joan Micklin Silver’s 1977 comedy “Between the Lines,” opening on Friday for…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Theater ‘Dirty Dancing’ be damned. A new musical shows another side of the Borscht Belt
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