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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CIVILITY — Why Donald Trump Has Never Used That Word
As the language of public life has declined from dinner-table English to something previously considered unprintable, the word “civility” is suddenly everywhere — except Donald Trump’s lips. While Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that she has the right to be served dinner at any restaurant, no matter what she says or does, her father,…
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How Should A Mother Be?
Motherhood By Sheila Heti Henry Holt, 304 Pages, $27 Reading Sheila Heti’s new book “Motherhood” in public presents a particular challenge: Twice, in recent days, I was asked, by people clearly unfamiliar with Heti’s work, if I’m expecting. Which I am not, thank you very much. But, even considering the potential for bruised feelings, reading…
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Art What A Netflix Score And Time Blunder Say About The Business Of Progressivism
On August 12, 1958, the photographer Art Kane positioned himself on the south side of East 126th Street and shot a photo that would become iconic. Kane was on assignment for Esquire, which was preparing an issue on jazz, and he had gotten the most remarkable talent in Harlem to assemble for the occasion. Sonny…
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July 3: Chautauqua, New York: ‘Being Jewish In Trump’s America’: In Chautauqua, Jane Eisner Discusses Jewish Life
Every summer, the Everett Jewish Life Center in Chautauqua, New York, hosts a series of programs to engage religious leaders and communities, creating dialogue and a space for interfaith learning and understanding. This year, Forward editor-in-chief Jane Eisner will be one of its featured speakers. Jane will take the stage July 2 at 3:30 p.m….
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Film & TV LISTEN: Roseanne Cries With Shmuley About Torah, Family And That Tweet
(JTA) — Actress Roseanne Barr became emotional and expressed regret for her tweet against a former Obama administration official during a podcast interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. The interview took place two days after ABC canceled her popular show, a reboot of her late 1980s sitcom, over the tweet mocking Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser…
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A ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ In Yiddish — The Way It Ought To Be
Barely two years after Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” made its groundbreaking 1949 debut, a Yiddish production starring — and translated by — Joseph Buloff opened in Brooklyn, with Miller’s blessing. The title of a review by George Ross in Commentary described it as “‘Death of a Salesman’ in the Original,” and the witty…
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Could ‘Bubbes For Babies’ Change The Immigration Debate?
A group of passionate senior citizens in their eighties and nineties is organizing to protest the separation of children from their parents at the border, hoping that their age will “shine a spotlight” on the pain being inflicted on children. The effort is being spearheaded by 89-year-old Debbie Sherman and 82-year-old Susan Milliken, according to…
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10 Sharp Women Who Should Be Part Of The Intellectual Canon
SHARP: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion By Michelle Dean New York: Grove Press. 362 pages, $26.00 Atop the Acropolis in Athens is the Erechtheion, where six caryatids — pillars in the form of female figures — support the structure sacred to Athena. Michelle Dean’s “Sharp,” the incisive and engaging stories…
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How I Stumped The Mikveh Lady
Though neither of us was as observant as our parents, because both families belonged to the orthodox Fifth Avenue Synagogue on New York’s Upper East Side, that’s where my fiancé and I would soon be getting married. “I’ll have to get a get,” Martin told me, which sounded redundant until he explained that, despite being…
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Listen To The Entire Yiddish Repertoire — At Once!
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Most American Jews recognize at most two or three Yiddish songs: “Afn Pripetshik,” “Tumbalalaika” and perhaps “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn.” American Jews who grew up speaking Yiddish, however, can recognize dozens of others such as “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen,” “Afn Veg Shteyt A Boym” and so forth. Fans…
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Resurrecting Yiddish Music One Song At A Time
Sometime in late 1944, Taybl Birman, a 28-year-old Soviet Jew working in a tailor shop in war-torn Minsk, composed a song for her husband, Misha, a Red Army soldier who was fighting the Nazis on the Eastern Front. The song began playfully — with Taybl mentioning that she was sitting “beside my beloved sewing machine,”…
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