Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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For #MeToo To Work We Have To Move Beyond 90s ‘Bitchification’
Award-winning journalist Allison Yarrow is a former deputy digital editor at the Forward and a National Magazine Award finalist who has also written for, among others, The New York Times, the Washington Post and Vox. She was a TED resident and author of an ebook about the sex abuse trial in Brooklyn of ultra-Orthodox counselor…
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Film & TV Jeff Goldblum, A Flirt And A Half, Is A Philip Roth Fan
A confession: I, due to an unexplained resistance to seeing the “Jurassic Park” movies, was until this year unaware of the existence of Jeff Goldblum. This was a mistake. Jeff Goldblum, I have learned, is the closest thing Hollywood has to a human sunbeam — see “Thor: Ragnarok,” in which he plays a dictator with…
The Latest
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We Need To Talk About How Israeli Men Treat American Women
When I took a Birthright trip to Israel, the main attraction was not the land. It was our Israeli security guard. His name was Uri or Guy or something — one of those names we don’t have in America that means “pebble” or “biblical general.” He seemed mute. And he was as fresh from army…
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The Secret Jewish History Of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Beloved Infidel’
Sheilah Graham, longtime Hollywood gossip columnist and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lover and muse, was delighted to share her personal history, especially its romantic highlights. She wrote no fewer than 10 tell-alls. But while Graham earned her living by exposing the secrets and foibles of others, one fact you won’t find in her autobiographical work is…
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‘Very Biblical’ Doesn’t Mean What Jeff Sessions And Sarah Huckabee Sanders Think It Means
Attorney General Jefferson Sessions, recent recipient of a justice award from the Orthodox Union, had some bone-chilling commentary on the Bible this week, claiming it justified separating children and parents at the border—and using the same part of the New Testament, Romans 13, that had once been used to justify slavery. But let’s parse what…
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Music What It’s Like To Play The First Cantor In Opera History
Jews have always had a complicated relationship with opera. Ostracized in European society, Jewish composers and librettists had few chances to make professional headway; perhaps the most successful of them, Mozart collaborator Lorenzo da Ponte, converted to Christianity. The most influential late-Romantic opera composer, Richard Wagner, was a notorious anti-Semite. And prior to the mid-19th…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History Of Watership Down
Richard Adams never intended his 1972 novel, “Watership Down,” to be an allegory. And a book about a group of rabbits certainly doesn’t have a Jewish ring to it. Chocolate versions of them are eaten to celebrate Easter. They aren’t even kosher animals — despite the fact that they chew the cud, they don’t have…
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Can Natalie Portman And Jonathan Safran Foer Save The World From Humans?
It’s difficult to tell 98% of your audience that they are inhumanly cruel and then not lose them. But that’s what producers Jonathan Safran Foer, Natalie Portman and Christopher Dillon Quinn hope to do with “Eating Animals.” It’s a new movie whose subject is the production and consumption of food from animals, loosely based on…
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Music ‘Yiddish Under The Stars’ Turns Central Park Into Fabulous ‘Panoply Of Sounds’
Central Park’s annual SummerStage Festival, typically the domain of Americana artists like Rhiannon Giddens, rap veterans including Public Enemy, indie rock legends such as the Feelies, latter-day folkies like the Indigo Girls, jazz artists including McCoy Tyner and Roy Haynes, and Afropop stars such as King Sunny Adé, took on a decidedly Ashkenazic tinge last…
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At Historic Synagogue, A Hopeful Meditation On Loss Takes Flight
The aluminum chairs — off-kilter and whimsically rugged, as if Chagall had ventured into furniture-making — soar above the women’s balcony, held aloft by two golden birds. Sunlight, softened through stained glass, bounces off the pair’s upturned legs. The sculpture, by Kiki Smith, a renowned sculptor and printmaker, is called “Homecoming.” It’s easy to think,…
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Art The Secret Jewish History Of Rosie The Riveter
At the end of World War II, fascism seemed to have met its well-deserved end, a result far from inevitable when the conflict began. The New York Historical Society exhibit “Rockwell, Roosevelt, & the Four Freedoms,” open through September 2, reminds visitors how fragile democracy appeared at the time. While American men served overseas, women’s…
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Most Popular
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Fast Forward Rep. Max Miller says driver called him a ‘dirty Jew’ and threatened to kill his family. A local doctor turned himself in.
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News As Israel attacks, what is life like for Jews in Iran?
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Opinion Bombing Iran, Donald Trump is triggering a tragedy that Thucydides foretold long ago
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Culture Why is Israel’s attack on Iran called ‘Rising Lion’ — and what does the Bible have to do with it?
In Case You Missed It
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News Schumer, highest-ranking Jewish official, slams Trump over Iran strike — but leaves his own position unclear
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Fast Forward Why some see an ancient biblical enemy in Iran
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Opinion If war with Iran goes badly for the U.S., Jews will be the scapegoat
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Fast Forward Israel puts civilians on high alert as Iranian leaders vow response to US strikes
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