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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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My First Pesach In America — In 1883
This story was originally published in the Forward on April 7, 1936 Once upon a long time ago, 53 years ago in late April 1883, I found myself in my new hometown of New York City, about to spend my first Pesach in America. I’d disembarked from my ship ten months prior in June of…
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Art What Does It Mean To Inhabit A Jewish Place?
The nicest way to view the Jewish Museum’s new exhibit “Marc Camille Chaimowicz: Your Place or Mine,” the London-based artist’s first solo show in the United States, is alone. As the last straggler at a recent preview showing of the exhibit, I wandered in near solitude through the playfully arranged last section, called “Le Jardin…
The Latest
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At Millennial Women’s Conference, The Forverts Finds A New Audience
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Last Sunday, March 25, I attended a unique one-day conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. organized by and for millennial women. The annual event, called OWN IT, attracts female students from ten universities every year. As the first woman editor of the Yiddish Forward I was…
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WATCH: Yiddish Writer Yechiel Shraybman Describes His Moldovan Shtetl
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A squeaky well, an old Jewish judge who refuses to open his eyes — these are the images that the writer Yekhiel Shraybman brings to life in vivid vignettes about his Moldavian hometown, Rashkev. In this video Shraybman describes his years in the Yiddish theater in Bucharest,…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Baseball’s Opening Day
Like a New Year celebration, Major League Baseball’s annual opening day brings with it an opportunity to start afresh: to leave the past behind and to begin anew with a clean slate. Every team begins the new season as a reborn entity: The reigning World Champions and last year’s losers are equal going into the…
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A Devastating History Of Genocide — In One Ukrainian Town
ANATOMY OF A GENOCIDE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A TOWN CALLED BUCZACZ By Omer Bartov Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $30 In researching the Ukrainian town of Buczacz, Omer Bartov wanted to uncover his own family history. But only a few traces of that history remained. What “Anatomy of a Genocide” provides instead is…
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Why Vowels Matter So Much At The Passover Seder — Really!
Some Seders focus on the plot of the Haggadah — the hunger-fueled journey to Egypt, the 400 years of ensuing enslavement, the long and brutal struggle against Pharaoh’s cruelty and, at last, the triumphant Exodus. But in families like mine, the main event is not plot, it’s the vowels. Dinner is postponed indefinitely as relatives…
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See ‘RBG’ The Movie – Plus Jane Eisner In Conversation With The Directors
On May 1, come to the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan to see “RBG” before it arrives in the theaters. After the screening, Forward editor-in-chief Jane Eisner will interview the directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West. They will discuss the making of the film and how a Jewish lawyer ended up revolutionizing gender imbalance in…
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An Amazing Escape From Yemen – Dan Friedman In Conversation With Mohammed Al Samawi
The Talmud says, “Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.” But how many of us would actually save a life? Against the odds, four strangers of three faiths worked together to save Mohammed Al Samawi, reaching out through social media. Dan Friedman, executive editor and former culture editor…
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When Nora Ephron Eviscerated Ayn Rand In The New York Times
When Nora Ephron passed away in 2012, you may have caught a mention, in her New York Times obituary of a “tart, sharply observed” profile of Ayn Rand she had penned in the 1960s. The idea might have struck you as odd: Ephron on Rand? Sure, both were Jewish writers who were among the defining…
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What Was Passover Like Before WWII? 5 Facts You May Not Know
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. If you‘re ever looking for descriptions of life in the shtetl, the most informative source is the work of B. Gorin (1868-1925). Though he was best known as the author of the first history of the Yiddish theater, Gorin was also a great writer with a special…
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