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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Larry Eisenberg, New York Times Limerick King, Dies At 99
Larry Eisenberg, commenter supreme, Has passed away, it would seem As recorded in The Times, Which he graced with his lines, His daughter reports she’s bereaved. With his limericks sublime, Eisenberg was 99, A biomedical engineer And Sci-Fi writer who endeared, He was truly one of a kind. Born to parents Sidney and Yetta, Larry…
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Dear Men: Dating You Is Hell
Dear Men, I regret to inform you that I am unavailable to date you at this time. Thank you for your interest in dating me — and for the more than 3 billion of you who have never expressed interest in dating me, thank you for what I can only imagine would be your interest…
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Music Klezmer Revivalists Hail The Lords Of The ‘Tanz!’
In 1955, just when klezmer was about to end its half-century-long run as a viable commercial and creative outlet for immigrant-era Jewish musicians and a few younger instrumentalists who took up their torch, the great Ukrainian-born clarinetist Dave Tarras recorded one more album at the urging and with the creative guidance of his son-in-law, Sam…
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What Do A Jewish Broadway King And Pablo Escobar Have In Common? This Dalí Painting
A Jewish theater impresario, an infamous Colombian drug lord and a Japanese businessman are connected by a curious dance of life and death – more specifically “The Dance” a 1957 painting by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. The New York Times reports that the chain of ownership of the artwork, which depicts two twisted, faceless figures…
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Yes, Prince Charles Jams Out To Leonard Cohen
For all his royal trappings, Prince Charles is still a 70-year-old white man. And like many 70-year-old white men, he loves the music of the late Leonard Cohen. In a new special for BBC Radio 3’s “Private Passions,” where well-known Brits draw up playlists of songs they’ve found to be formative, the Prince of Wales…
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The Navy Is Disciplining Sailors With Ayn Rand (Yes, Really)
The Russian-Jewish novelist Ayn Rand’s books are many things: A surprisingly formative force in modern conservatism, the subject of the hilarious scorn of Nora Ephron, something your high school boyfriend felt, like, really passionate about, alarmingly attractive to Rand Paul and unconscionably long. Now, as the United States Navy seeks more humane forms of discipline,…
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News Media Should Democratize Presidential Debates — Not Monetize Them
The CBS board may have fired Les Moonves for misleading them about sex, but he did call it straight about money, media and politics. “Trump’s run may not be good for America,” he told a conference of investment bankers in 2016, “but it’s damn good for CBS.” The campaign may be a “circus,” he said,…
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In Praise Of Ruth Rubin, Patron Saint Of Yiddish Song
Ruth Rubin was the Alan Lomax of Yiddish folk song. For over 40 years, she visited Jewish communities around the world, tape recorder in hand, assembling a collection of more than 2,000 songs, including lullabies, children’s songs, love songs, drinking songs, satirical songs, and work songs, gathered from ordinary (and some extraordinary) “informants.” Hers was…
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After 20 Years, A Bible Translation Gives Old Stories New Life
How can one find fresh nuance in an over 2,ooo-year-old book? If the book is the Hebrew Bible, by returning to the original Hebrew. After over two decades, the 83-year-old literary critic and translator Robert Alter has completed his translation of the Hebrew Bible, an undertaking that has resulted in over 3,000 pages of commentary…
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In ‘On The Basis Of Sex,’ A Reverential Portrait Of RBG
In the opening sequence of Mimi Leder’s feature film “On the Basis of Sex,” set in 1956, swarms of men in black and grey suits march toward what turns out to be Harvard Law School. Suddenly, among those drab masculine multitudes, we spot the back of a single woman in a blue dress: our heroine,…
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Suddenly, Yiddish Theater Is Everywhere!
“Fiddler on the Roof” has made headlines of late as public figures have expressed their love for Yiddish theater. Interestingly, what brings on the love is the Yiddish language itself. Alan Dershowitz is not primarily known as a theater critic, but he was so moved by a recent Yiddish performance of “Fiddler on the Roof”…
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