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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Will Oprah Winfrey Be Our First Jewish President?
Now that Oprah Winfrey has all but been inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States – thereby becoming the first woman to hold the office (and only the second African-American) – the question on everyone’s mind is: will Oprah also count as the first Jewish president? Well, let’s see. It’s not true that…
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NPR’s Bob Garfield Is Still Searching For His Identity — Jewish and Otherwise
Bob Garfield has been a newspaper reporter, an ad critic, a roving national correspondent for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and, currently, the host of WNYC’s “On the Media.” Now he’s also a playwright and stage performer, taking his autobiographical one-man show, “Ruggedly Jewish,” to weekend performances around the country. He’ll be at the Majorie S….
The Latest
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Movie News: ‘Fargo,’ Woody Allen’s Archives, Covering The Golden Globes
It’s officially movie awards season: The Golden Globes, the first major film and television awards show of the year, will take place on Sunday January 7. Catch up on the nominees you’ve missed this weekend, and read on for this past week’s most important movie news. 1) What does “Fargo” have to do with President…
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Film & TV Woody Allen’s Misogynist Archives Are A Problem. So Is The Viewpoint Of Those Who Assess Them.
In the post-Weinstein moment, Woody Allen is something of an anomaly. His adopted daughter Dylan Farrow has publicly restated her decades-old accusation that Allen sexually assaulted her when she was seven years old; in 2016, Allen’s son Ronan Farrow, whose deeply reported stories in the New Yorker on the allegations against Weinstein and Weinstein’s attempts…
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Yiddish Cabaret in Israel Brings Odessa To Tel Aviv
Recently, a sold-out crowd packed the Sholom Aleichem House in Tel Aviv for Yiddish cabaret. The crowd swayed and sang to Yiddish songs, including one about a young woman who reaches Buenos Aires and sleeps in the train station, and thinks of her dear mother, who she left back home. The entranced, standing-room-only crowd seemed…
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How Aharon Appelfeld Found His Home In Hebrew
In Philip Roth’s novel “Operation Shylock”, a fictional Israeli writer named Aharon Appelfeld offers warnings about an identity thief targeting the narrator. In real life, Appelfeld, who died on January 4 at age 85, cautioned readers about what losing Jewish cultural identity might lead to. With a laconic, unelaborate style echoing his soft-spoken manner in…
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The Jewish Picasso Is Finally Ready For His Close-Up
A Twenty Minute Silence Followed By Applause By Shawn Wen Sarabande Books, 131 pages, $15.95 In 1974, the legendary mime Marcel Marceau appeared in a TV advertisement for Xerox color copy machines. The ad lasted 90 seconds, during which — as the writer Shawn Wen describes in her recent book on Marceau, “A Twenty Minute…
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Winter Storm Grayson Doesn’t Match The Great Blizzard Of ‘88
In the days before storms were given hipster names and the meteorologists were dropping bomb cyclones on it, the East Coast used to look back with dread at the storm of ’88. The Great Blizzard of 1888 was the great grand-daddy of storms, with up to 58 inches of snow drifting with powerful winds up…
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Art On His 125th Birthday, Solomon Yudovin’s Art Instructs On The Importance Of Jewish Identity
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In honor of the 125th birthday of Russian-Jewish artist Solomon Yudovin, a modest yet captivating exhibit at Russia’s St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center highlights some of his best work, including historical photographs, drawings and book illustrations. Of particular interest: A number of his watercolors from the 1930s,…
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Books Aharon Appelfeld, Israeli Author, Dies At 85
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld, who published more than 45 books in Hebrew and translated into many languages, has died. Appelfeld, whose most recent book was published three months ago, died early Thursday at the age of 85. Most of Appelfeld’s fiction dealt in some way with the Holocaust, mainly its effect on…
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Class Conflict Is At The Heart Of Mad Men Creator’s New Thriller
HEATHER, THE TOTALITY By Matthew Weiner Little, Brown & Co, 144 pages, $22.50 Meet Mark and Karen Breakstone. They got married a little late in life: “Karen was nearly 40 and had given up on finding someone as good as her father.” Some friends introduced her to Mark, who, at first has only “his potential…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
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News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
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Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
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Fast Forward Trump taps shock jock Sid Rosenberg and a Haredi newspaper publisher for Holocaust Memorial Council
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