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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The Photograph That Gave Weegee His First Big Break
In the summer of 1936, Arthur Fellig, the newspaper photographer who would soon be known as Weegee the Famous, was already calling himself Weegee. But he was pretty far from being famous. He had quit a steady job as a darkroom printer about eighteen months earlier and started trying to make a living as a…
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A Transgressive, Brilliant Leftist Satirist’s Work Finds New Life In English
The works of Yiddish writer and satirist Moyshe Nadir in English translation are gaining a wider audience these days. The newest addition to this growing collection is Nadir’s acerbic comic play “Messiah in America,” translated by Michael Shapiro and published by Farlag. The Yiddish word farlag actually means publishing house. Both the selection of the…
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Why TREASON Is More Popular Than Ever
Something unexpected happened to treason over the past two hundred years — the word nearly disappeared from use. As this handy chart reveals, treason was a much larger part of vocabulary in 1810 than it was in 2010. And maybe because the word left conversation, it also left our consciousness. We forgot about it. Until…
The Latest
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Leonard Lopate Returns To Radio Amid Controversy
Radio host Leonard Lopate has found a new home—but not all of his neighbors are happy to have him. Lopate, who was suspended and later terminated by WNYC last December after allegations of “inappropriate conduct,” launched his maiden show on the Brooklyn-based station, WBAI on July 16th, 2018 the Columbia Journalism Review reports. The show,…
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Theater America’s First All-Yiddish ‘Fiddler’ Is A Perfect, Bittersweet Portrait Of Jewish Joy
I was sick for my latest birthday, sniffly and feverish, yet I somehow found the wherewithal to force my gathered friends to watch the scene from “Fiddler on the Roof” in which the furious ghost of Frume Sarah rises from the grave. You know the one. Tevye, trying to convince his wife Golde to approve…
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Meet The Greatest (And Only) Jewish Sumo Wrestler
In 1987, Marcello Saloman Imach, a 22-year-old swimming instructor stepped into a gym in Buenos Aires, stamped his feet and did something his Jewish mother could never have imagined. He started sumo wrestling. Sumo is Japan’s national sport, wherein two, overweight and underclad fighters (rikishi) try to force each other out of a ring or…
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In Vichy France, The Nazi Era Viewed Up Close
Deposition 1940-1944: A Secret Diary of Life in Vichy France By Léon Werth; edited and translated by David Ball Oxford University Press, 368 pages, $34.95 The French Jewish novelist and essayist Léon Werth spent World War II, buffeted by history but shielded from its worst consequences, chronicling the passivity, inertia and gradual political awakening of…
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EXCLUSIVE: The Iraqi Jewish Archive Could Reshape Foreign Policy. But Its Future Is Uncertain.
This is the final installment in a series on the Iraqi Jewish Archive, a trove of items from Iraq’s exiled Jewish community currently in the United States. Previously, we examined the recent history of Iraqi Jews, the archive’s restoration and the complex argument over its ownership. Catch up with part one, “The Last Relics Of…
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Remembering Bess Myerson, The First And Only Jewish Miss America
Bess Myerson, the first and only Jewish Miss America and, later, a power player in New York politics, was born on July 16, 1924. Myerson, a figure of glamour and, eventually, scandal, was a sign of changing times. Her coronation as Miss America came in September, 1945, only a few days after V.J. Day, the…
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Film & TV Rediscovered Stanley Kubrick Script Sheds Light On His Jewishness
An early screenplay Stanley Kubrick which was believed to have been lost just re-surfaced after sixty years. The screenplay, written in 1956, was titled “Burning Secret” and was an adaptation of Viennese novelist, Stefan Zweig’s 1913 novella of the same name. The novella is told from the perspective of a twelve-year old Jewish boy. He…
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EXCLUSIVE: In Exile, Iraqi Jews Are Desperate To Reclaim Their Artifacts — But So Is Iraq
This is the second article in a series on the Iraqi Jewish Archive, a trove of items from Iraq’s exiled Jewish community. In “The Last Relics Of Iraq’s Jewish Past Are In America. Should They Be Returned?” we explored the tumultuous 20th-century history of Iraqi Jews and the fight to return the archive to its…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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