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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Meet Al Lieberman, Who Caught The ‘68 Democratic National Convention On Camera
August 26, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, an event that swept the Windy City into discord for four tumultuous days. Protestors camped out at Lincoln and Grant Park were intimidated by police and National Guardsmen, who met their calls for an end of the war in Vietnam…
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Celebrating Leonard Bernstein At 100
With August 25 marking his centenary, Massachusetts-born Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) remains the 20th century’s most famous Jewish musician. His Symphony No. 1 Jeremiah and Symphony No. 3 (Kaddish), among other works, are lasting contributions to the orchestral repertoire, as memoirs by musical associates, including Jack Gottlieb and John Mauceri attest. Bernstein’s Yiddishkeit was essential to…
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In The Face Of Circus Politics, We Need Better Stories
I recently returned from a Trump fast. It was actually a news fast, but since the news these days is pretty much all Trump all the time, a Trump detox is what it turned out to be. It was in the high desert, in another country, at a place with mercifully lousy cell service, blissfully…
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Help Get The Forward To South By Southwest
The Forward is nationwide, but it has been underrepresented in one particular area — the South By Southwest! You can help us change that. The Forward has had its finger on the Jewish pulse for over 120 years and has been part of the digital media landscape for nearly a decade. In the past three…
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On Dorothy Parker’s 125th Birthday, 7 Brutally Funny Quips To Remember Her By
Dorothy Parker: You know her. Master of the velvet-clad barb, she was a literary polymath who could devastate anyone in fewer words than it might take her lunch date to order a salad. If you had the mixed fortune to be that lunch date, and you had previously held your own wit in high regard…
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Art Israeli Artist Objected To Chicago Sculpture’s Restoration. Now Its Owners Have Locked It Away.
Chicago is a city renowned for its public art, from Anish Kapoor’s Instagram-omnipresent “Cloud Gate,” better known as the Bean, to Marc Chagall’s mosaic “Four Seasons” at the Chase Tower Plaza. Now, a piece of public art situated nearby both of those works, Yaacov Agam’s “Communication X9,” has been removed from the Michigan Avenue address…
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Seth Greenland Can’t Leave New York Behind
Seth Greenland, the LA-based author, whose fifth book, “The Hazards of Good Fortune” hit stores August 21, only writes New York novels now. Though he’s lived since 1997 on the Left Coast where he’s worked as a television writer for shows like “Big Love” and “Arli$$,” Greenland was born in New York City and grew…
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I Let My Rabbi Mom Control My Dating Apps
When Beth Singer was a rabbi at her first full-time pulpit, she went into labor when she was about to perform a funeral. Her contractions were coming 20 minutes apart, so she decided to proceed with the funeral. Jewish funerals rarely last longer than 40 minutes, so she knew she could time one contraction for…
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Arsène Tchakarian, Last Surviving Member Of French Resistance Unit, Fought Relentlessly For Liberty
Arsène Tchakarian, a French Resistance fighter who survived the execution of much of his unit in 1944, died August 4 at the age of 101. He was the last surviving member of the Groupe Manouchian, a communist Resistance faction composed mainly of immigrants and Jews that did substantial damage to the Nazi occupation of France…
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The Secret Jewish History Of ELO
For the first time in nearly 40 years, rock auteur and Hall of Famer Jeff Lynne is touring North America with his band ELO, the English group that churned out a bevy of huge pop hits — including “Evil Woman,” “Livin’ Thing,” and “Mr. Blue Sky” — in the second half of the 1970s. Jeff…
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Film & TV How ‘BlackkKlansman’ Abandons Crucial Conversation About Race and Complicity
As I watched “BlackkKlansman” in a Colorado theater filled with white folks, I felt bored and extremely irritated. While Spike Lee’s latest joint is aesthetically beautiful, the content feels boring and reductive. I don’t think any black or Jewish person needs a flashy movie just to tell them that the Klu Klux Klan is dangerous….
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