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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Film & TV 8 young Jewish comedians on what ‘SNL 50’ means to them
'Saturday Night Live' may be entering middle age, but these rising Jewish comics are just getting started.
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At 96, Judith Leiber Is Still The Queen Of All Handbags
Fashionable evening bags are one thing. But Judith Leiber’s handbags marry exquisitely detailed craftsmanship with a joyously bold, at moments, anarchistic, vision. Close to 100 bejeweled silver and gold-plated high-end “after five” handbags — including Leiber’s iconic evening purses (minaudieres) sculpted to evoke various vegetables and small animals — are on display in the stunning…
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‘I Love Dick,’ And More To Read, Watch, And Do This Weekend
Jill Soloway’s show “Transparent” has been an audience and critic favorite; on Friday, the Jewish director’s new series, “I Love Dick,” will premiere on Amazon Prime. The show stars Kathryn Hahn, who also plays Rabbi Raquel Fein on “Transparent.” Hahn spoke to JTA about the challenges and opportunities of being a non-Jew playing a rabbi…
The Latest
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When Oprah Met Rosie O’Donnell At ‘Indecent’
The current buzz about Rosie O’Donnell’s Twitter feed (yes, really) is mostly centered on the fact that President Trump revived one of her old tweets to throw some unabashedly petty shade at James Comey, the FBI Director he abruptly — and with confused reasoning — fired on Tuesday. We finally agree on something Rosie. https://t.co/BSP5F3PgbZ…
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Irving Berlin Is 129 Today — This Is His Most American Song
I’ve always been dubious of the idea of “American Culture.” America, being, since its inception, a land of immigrants constantly in demographic and ethnic flux. And this is a good thing, indeed, the idea of a country founded upon legal and philosophical principles, as opposed to ethnic or linguistic concerns, is the fundamental promise of…
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20 Years Ago, Deep Blue Beat Garry Kasparov — And Changed The World
On May 11, 1997, something utterly unexpected happened to then-world chess champion Garry Kasparov: He conceded defeat in the last of six chess games with the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, losing the match. It wasn’t the first time Kasparov had faced off with a machine. In 1985, he beat 32 computerized opponents at the same…
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Anti-Semitism Goes Missing In Julian Assange Doc
Look at how they look at him, Julian Assange’s cadre of cyber vigilantes. In a private home in Norfolk, in livery cabs with Daniel Ellsberg in the passenger seat, in windowless rooms in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, members of Assange’s Wikileaks organization fawn over him and defer to him, give him the floor first…
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Rama Burshtein Has A Fundamental Belief In Marriage
In “The Wedding Plan,” writer-director Rama Burshtein’s follow-up to her debut feature “Fill The Void,” a Hasidic Jewish woman named Micha gives herself less than a month to find true love, after which she plans to give up on marriage. As with her previous film, Burshtein focuses on the topic of marriage among the Haredi…
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Is ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Anti-Feminist?
Hulu’s television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” has gained general acclaim as a feminist manifesto for our times. But critic and novelist Francine Prose isn’t buying it. Writing in The New York Review of Books last week, Prose wrote that the show, which explores a fictionalized future United States in which…
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The Velvet Underground & Nico: A (Belated) 50th Anniversary Reading List
I remember the first time I ever really listened to Lou Reed. I was around 12 years old and I had recently come into possession of one of the old record players collecting dust at my grandmother’s house. I owned (really, stole from my dad) three records – “Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly,” “Led Zeppelin II,”…
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Israel’s Book Fair Cuts Are Devastating To Readers
Forty communities in Israel, all located far away from major cities, will not be participating in this year’s Shavua HaSefer, or “Week of the Book” program due to funding cuts — and the news has prompted an outcry from writers and community leaders who say this will be devastating to readers. Shavua HaSefer, a program…
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How Does Ben Platt Handle Pressure Of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’? Ask His Rabbi
At 23, Ben Platt is a Broadway star, a member of Time’s 2017 list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People, and generally expected to win a 2017 Tony Award. The son of theater and film producer Marc Platt, the actor has been immersed in musical theater effectively since birth, but his big break has…
Most Popular
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Culture Hitler is trending on TikTok again — and they’re trying to make him seem like a nice guy
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Culture You can buy Sukkot gift boxes that say ‘tuchus’ on Amazon
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Fast Forward Sitcom star encourages non-Jews like her to hang mezuzahs on their homes
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Opinion A maelstrom around Rashida Tlaib shows how broken discourse about the war has become
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish זשורנאַל „ייִדישלאַנד“ דרוקט ערשטן קאַפּיטל פֿון אַ נײַעם אַוואַנטור־ראָמאַן‘Yidishland’ magazine prints first chapter of a new adventure novel
אויך אין דעם נומער: אַ ייִדישע איבערזעצונג פֿון לידער פֿון אַן אוקראַיִנישן פּאָעט וואָס איז געפֿאַלן אין שלאַכט קעגן רוסלאַנד.
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Fast Forward Israel kills Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah
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Culture On Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, assessing the 39th president’s record on the Jews
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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