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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A Stand-Up Tragedy From The Mind Of David Grossman
After two hours and 40 minutes of brutal self-flagellation, Dov Greenstein stumbled exhaustedly around a raised wooden stage strewn with flowers: his shirt torn, his pants ripped, his face battered and painted with blood. “I’m a little tired now,” he said, exhaling as the lights dimmed and the stage faded to black at the end…
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October 3: Manhattan: Judy Gold Honors Sharp-Witted Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers, known for her sharp tongue and self-deprecating humor, was a female pioneer in the field of American comedy. Buy tickets here. Join comedian Judy Gold and Rivers’s niece Caroline Waxler for night full of controversial humor à la Rivers on October 3 at the American Jewish Historical Society in Manhattan. Beginning at 7…
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Sartre, The Kavanaugh Hearings And The Politics Of ‘Bad Faith’
Bad faith is very much in the news. As the media relentlessly remind us, Republicans are tirelessly accusing Democrats of bad faith, while Democrats relentlessly blast Republicans for the same sin. But Jean-Paul Sartre, the thinker who immortalized the phrase, would argue that what he called “mauvaise foi” is not only quite different, but it…
The Latest
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‘A Good Name’: What Jewish Law Says About Crimes Committed In Youth
On Thursday, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified that President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, tried to rape her in 1982. Her testimony, some of which has been public for weeks, sparked a vociferous debate about sexual assault. Democrats, who opposed Kavanaugh from the get-go, see in the accusation a tarnished name that would impede…
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Theater ‘Hoaxocaust’ Is As Controversial As It Sounds
Barry Levey wants a Jewish identity free of victimhood. Confronting his brother’s interfaith marriage, his mother’s objection to the union and his LatinX boyfriend’s insistence that the Jewish story is no longer one of persecution, he begins to wonder: What would it be like if the Holocaust never happened? “Imagine how much easier life would…
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Art Houdini’s Astounding Jewish History Revealed!
A thrilling new exhibition about Harry Houdini pulls off an elaborate trick of its own. “Inescapable: The Life and Legacy of Harry Houdini,” at the Jewish Museum of Maryland through January 2019, manages to make the mythical magician’s story feel fresh — an achievement that’s almost as hard as making an elephant disappear, which Houdini…
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A Life Of Hannah Arendt In All Its Graphic Detail
The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt By Ken Krimstein Bloomsbury, 232 pages, $28 In “The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, a Tyranny of Truth,” a graphic biography, Ken Krimstein, a New Yorker cartoonist who teaches at DePaul University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts Arendt in a way no other book…
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Memo To A Sexist Editor: You Are Not A Martyr
In Ian Buruma’s eyes, there is something cruelly ironic about the circumstances of his departure from the New York Review of Books. As the broadsheet’s editor-in-chief, he had published Jian Ghomeshi’s essay “Reflections from a Hashtag,” in which a man accused by over 20 women of sexual assault meditated on how social media scorn had…
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Philip Roth Gets The Memorial He Wanted At The New York Public Library
On September 25, 2018, Philip Roth, a titan of American letters received a memorial service at the New York Public Library at Bryant Park. The Associated Press reports that hundreds gathered to celebrate the memory of the late author, who passed away in May at the age of 85. Among the attendees were writers Salman…
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Theater See The Original Costume Sketches For ‘Fiddler On The Roof’
The iconic look of “Fiddler on the Roof,” from its Broadway debut to the 1976 film, is due in no small part to the show’s original costume designer, Patricia Zipprodt. 30 photos of Zipprodt’s design sketches for the musical’s 1964 premiere, part of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ collection and recently…
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Liana Finck On Peter Pan, Nabokov And The Rats Of Self-Doubt
In many ways, the comic artist Liana Finck’s work is fearless. Finck’s style is bold in its simplicity and storytelling, and now, in her latest book, “Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir” (Random House) brave in its intimacy. The book follows Leola (a fictionalized version of the artist) as she tries to reckon with the…
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