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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For Arvo Pärt, Music And Silence Are Divine
In her essay, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” Susan Sontag writes that “the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence.” Though Sontag never mentions the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (of whom she could hardly have been aware at the time),…
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How Did John Steinbeck And An Obama Staffer Get The Bible So Wrong?
Working for Barack Obama can be a career maker, but Hebrew readers have been puzzled by the explanation for the path that one former staffer took. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Michael Slaby, whom the newspaper described as “among the key tech gurus for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns,” has founded a startup called Timshel…
The Latest
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How My Daughter’s Bat Mitzvah Almost Didn’t Happen
Our daughter stood on the bimah facing the congregation, cradling a Torah nearly half her size. She chanted the Shema, loud and strong, filling the airy synagogue. Her song stirred reflections on assimilation and annihilation, the twin threats to Judaism of the long 20th century, and on the narrow and winding path my family traveled…
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25 Years Later, ‘Angels In America’ Returns To London
Tony Kushner’s generation-defining two-part play “Angels in America” premiered in San Francisco in 1991, but to many, its first definitive production was at London’s National Theatre in 1992. The year-long run of “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” — soon to be followed by part 2, “Angels in America: Perestroika” — cemented the play’s Broadway prospects,…
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More Than 120 Years Later, ‘Dreyfus Affair’ Still Resonates
The infamous story of the 1894 conspiracy against French Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason is being dramatized at Brooklyn’s BAM Fisher in a multi-media production, “The Dreyfus Affair,” based on texts and music from that period. The performance by The Ensemble for the Romantic Century (ERC) includes excerpts from the politically charged opera “La…
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When Smart Rabbis Make Dumb Videos We Must Demand Better
Recently, there’s been a trend to act as if the rising anti-Semitism across the Western world sprang from nothing. Not that there are no reasons behind the rise, but simply that before the resurgence of far right movements, anti-Semitism was simply not around in any meaningful capacity. We know this, of course, to be false….
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Jane Jacobs’s Epic Battle With Robert Moses Takes To Times Square Billboards
In the 20th century, New York City was shaped by city planner Robert Moses, activist Jane Jacobs, and their notorious battles. Now the city’s most famous district, Times Square, will pay homage to the impact of their clashes. As DNA Info reports, a background animation to the opera “A Marvelous Order,” which chronicles the conflict,…
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See Nuremberg’s Last Living Prosecutor — And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
The last living prosecutor to assist in the Nuremberg trials, a set of military tribunals that brought Nazi leaders to justice, learned an important lesson from the work: “War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people.” Ben Ferencz told that to Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes,” which will air an interview with Ferencz this Sunday….
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Vladimir Putin Watched ‘Dr. Strangelove’ With Oliver Stone
If you were given exclusive access to Russian president Vladimir Putin, how would you make use of that time? Filmmaker Oliver Stone had an interesting answer to that question: Show him Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” Yes, really. As The Washington Post reported, Stone, interviewing Putin for the upcoming Showtime feature “The Putin Interviews,” showed the…
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How Philippe Halsman Reinvented The Portrait
I’ve never truly believed the idea that portrait photography can tell us a clear truth about its subject. When we look at a portrait of Samuel Beckett, for instance, we might read a certain depth of life, and a certain hawk-like incisiveness, into the nooks and crannies of his face. But despite the expressiveness of…
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Jean Stein, Best-Selling Oral Historian, Dies In Apparent Suicide
Jean Stein, a best-selling author of oral histories, passed away on Sunday, April 30. As The Guardian reported, Stein apparently jumped to her death from the 15th floor of a Manhattan high-rise. She was 83 years old. Stein’s books included “Edie: An American Girl,” in which she brought together the voices of Edie Sedgwick’s friends,…
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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