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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Music The Secret Jewish History of ‘You’re Sixteen,’ That Song Joel Pollak Was Yammering About
The old rockabilly standard “You’re Sixteen,” first made famous by Johnny Burnette in 1960 and then revived by Ringo Starr in 1973, is back in the news again after right-wing commentator Joel Pollak, of Breitbart News, referred to the pop hit in defense of Alabama Republican Senatorial candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of…
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Lilli Hornig Fled Hitler And Helped Develop Atomic Weapons — Then Fought Against Their Use
Lilli Hornig, the Czech-born Jewish chemist who died on November 17 at age 96, showed an exemplary interest in what in the “Pirkei Avot” a book of the Mishnah, is termed g’milut chasadim, or acts of loving kindness. Hornig’s family, many of whom were scientists, fled their homeland in the early 1930s after her father…
The Latest
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Movie News: ‘Call Me By Your Name,’ Barbra Streisand And Sacha Baron Cohen
In my family, movies are an essential part of Thanksgiving: Most years, my cousins in Chicago and I will go see a blockbuster on Thanksgiving morning, returning just late enough to be met by parental panic over making sure things are done on time. (Yes, we also help out.) This year I’m staying in New…
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Nicole Krauss, Paul Auster Make New York Times List Of 2017’s Best Books
Novels by Nicole Krauss, Paul Auster and David Grossman are among the 100 books named to The New York Times’s 2017 list of the year’s 100 most notable books. Krauss’s “Forest Dark,” Auster’s “4 3 2 1” and Grossman’s “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” which won this year’s Man Booker International Prize, won commendations…
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Film & TV Michael Showalter, Known For His Comedy, Discusses The Seriously Dark ‘Search Party’
Best known for the zany TV comedies “The State” and “Stella” and feel-good films “Wet Hot American Summer” and “The Big Sick,” Michael Showalter might not be the person you’d expect to find behind an ambitious new noir. Yet as producer of the TBS comedy “Search Party,” the second season of which premiered on Sunday,…
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Should We Give Ayn Rand A Second Chance? Tony Award-Winning Director Says Yes.
An excellent way to win the scorn of your coworkers, I have learned over the past month, is to display Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” on your desk. (Yes, dear colleagues, Rand was Jewish, born as Alisa Rosenbaum in pre-revolutionary Russia. No, dear colleagues, I am not turning into an individualist psychopath, or…
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Art We Went To The Museum Of The Bible — So You Don’t Have To
Entering the Museum of the Bible was a little like getting on a plane to Israel — it was a mess trying to get through security. There was a kind of honeycombed bomb-sniffing device, tall as a man, that a French correspondent said reminded her of something from “Star Trek.” A newspaper reporter from Alabama…
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The Incredible, Mysterious, And Sometimes Even Erotic Dream Diary Of Ab Cahan
Abraham Cahan’s many kholoymes, his dreams, can be checked off his proverbial bucket list. His life’s work of a Yiddish paper is still going strong 120 years later. His desire to literally have that paper’s presence dominate Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the muse behind our historic building at 175 East Broadway, shapes the neighborhood’s skyline…
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How Photographer Bonnie Geller-Geld Captures Luminous Moments of Humanity
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Judging by her portfolio, Bonnie Geller-Geld is a little like the character in Woody Allen’s “Zelig” who has a knack for inserting himself into life’s big moments. She was on the scene with her Canon DSLR in 1988 when Leonard Bernstein took a bow at his 70th…
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Film & TV ‘Three Billboards’ Is A Movie About The Age Of Internet Accusations
There are three billboards right outside the town of Ebbing, Missouri, that have the power to start a war between the police department and one furious woman. “Still no arrests?” reads the first one, followed by “How come, Chief Willoughby?” and finished off with “Raped while dying.” Mildred Hayes, played by a scathing Frances McDormand,…
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Film & TV The Finale of ‘Nathan For You’ Is One Of The Year’s Best Films
Throughout “Finding Frances,” the movie-length finale to the fourth season of his Comedy Central show, “Nathan for You,” we see Nathan Fielder sitting in a moving car beside his septuagenarian co-star Bill Heath. Viewers of the show’s third season may remember Heath as a Bill Gates impersonator brought in to assist with a fraudulent film…
Most Popular
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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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News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
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Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Explainer: What the Israeli occupation of Gaza would mean for Israelis and Palestinians
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Yiddish טשיקאַוועסן: אונגערישע אויסשטעלונג ווײַזט רמזים פֿון הילצערנער שיל פֿון 18טן י״הTidbits: Exhibit displays remnants of 18th century wooden synagogue
אינעם 18טן יאָרהונדערט איז די קהילה אין נאַזנאַ געווען די צווייט גרעסטע אין גאַנץ טראַנסילוואַניע.
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News Is the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism the new Red Scare?
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Opinion Trump’s cuts are a war on Jewish literature, thought and history itself
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