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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With a New Director, Klezkanada Looks to the Future
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Since its founding in 1996, more than 10,000 people have attended Klezkanada, the annual festival of Jewish culture and Klezmer music held in Quebec’s Laurentian mountains. Despite Klezkanada’s ambitious scale (besides music it features theatrical workshops, Yiddish classes, creative writing seminars and concerts), the organization never had…
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A Yiddish Cruise on the Danube
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The longtime editor of the Bundist journal Lebns-Fragn and an Israel-correspondent for the Forverts, Yitzhak Luden z”l, used to say that Yiddish today outside of the Hasidic world is a language mainly spoken at festivals. Soon we’ll be able to say that it’s also spoken on river…
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Ariana Harwicz, Laurent Binet Make Longlist For 2018 Man Booker International Prize
The longlist for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, announced today, includes a novel by Javier Ceras about Enric Marco, the Spanish man who spent three decades pretending to have survived two Nazi concentration camps; “Flights,” the latest outing of Olga Tokarczuk, whose previous book “The Books of Jacob” was an epic historical novel about…
The Latest
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How ‘This American Life’ Changed The #MeToo Conversation
“It felt so unusual to hear women talking publicly about things that women talk about with friends,” Chana Joffe-Walt said. Joffe-Walt, a producer for “This American Life,” was discussing an episode of the show that had just gone viral. She had constructed the episode, titled “Five Women,” after months of painstaking reporting, and it had…
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Why Should We Care About The Anti-Semitic Ravings Of Louis-Ferdinand Céline?
With anti-Semitic violence on the rise in France, now might not be the most opportune time to announce a reprint of some of the most violent Jew-hating writings of the 20th century. Yet in December 2017, les éditions Gallimard in Paris declared that this May, three anti-Semitic tracts written by the author Louis-Ferdinand Céline in…
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On British TV, A Renaissance For Jewish Characters
For years, British television has been blighted by stock-in-trade Jewish stereotypes. Audiences have had to endure legions of Jewish mothers, Hasidim and Jews who sound like they got off the boat in 1910 whether they’re 10 or 110, and whether it’s 1910 or 2010! Part of the reason for this is that Jewish creatives have…
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All About Itzhak Perlman’s Musical Journey — And His Delightful 50-Year Marriage
(JTA) — Itzhak Perlman, arguably the most famous violinist in the world, has heard plenty of questions in his 50-year career. But when asked if his religious heritage has affected his playing, he sounds stumped. “I’m a violinist. I’m Jewish, so that makes me a Jewish musician,” he tells JTA on the phone recently from…
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A Family, Dispersed And Splintered By The Holocaust
MAYBE ESTHER: A FAMILY STORY By Katja Petrowskaja; translated from the German by Shelley Frisch Harper, 272 pages, $25.99 By Julia M. Klein More than seven decades after World War II and the Holocaust ruptured civilization, we’re still trying to make sense of the fallout. Intimate first-person accounts have ceded ground, in large part, to…
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Art Jewish Rebels Once Dreamed Of Peace On Earth. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Despite its origins in the work of the Jewish Karl Marx, and its early Soviet Jewish advocates, communism never served the Jewish people particularly well. Less than two decades after the Russian Revolution, Josef Stalin’s Great Purge made a particular — if unofficial — target of Jews. One decade after the 1938 end of the…
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You Are Natalie Portman!
Classy, gifted, intelligent — is there anything you can’t do? People look up to you as a role model and you take that responsibility very seriously. Education is of prime importance to you, as is leading a full intellectual life. You are not the most outgoing person in a room and feel no need to…
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You’re Lena Dunham!
Talented and honest, you sometimes forget to look before you leap — or think before you speak. You are always, however, willing to admit when you’ve made a mistake. Your anxiety and neuroses can sometimes be crippling and managing it is a priority in your life. One thing that doesn’t scare you? Pushing the boundaries…
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