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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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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Playwright Israel Horovitz Accused Of Sexual Harassment, Assault By Nine Women
Playwright Israel Horovitz, the founding artistic director of Gloucester Stage Company, has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by nine women, The New York Times’s Jessica Bennett today reported. Horovitz’s accusers are all women who worked with him when they were adolescents or in their early 20s. They include the playwright Jocelyn Meinhardt, who…
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Amy Schumer Shines As ‘Shiksa Goddess’ In Steve Martin’s Dim-Watted Play
Amy Schumer, in her Broadway debut, proves herself a competent stage actress, an unsurprisingly gifted physical comedian, and, remarkably, a formidable shiska goddess. It’s just a shame the vehicle bringing her here, Steve Martin’s “Meteor Shower,” is quite so stubbornly earthbound. Martin’s latest— the multitalented onetime “Saturday Night Live” star previously wrote the absurdist comedy…
The Latest
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Why We’re Living Inside The Worst Movie Ever Made
Maybe the most salient characteristic of our culture is how much of it is bad. Technological changes have allowed an unprecedented number of hacks to produce great quantities of what the parlance of the day terms “content.” At the same time, the presumed existence of a consumer with a bottomless appetite for diversion has encouraged…
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Art Director of Holocaust Museum Fears Its Lessons Are Timeless
Sara Bloomfield joined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in its early stages, years before the project turned into one of the nation’s most visited landmarks on the National Mall in Washington. Now, after serving as director of the museum for 18 years, Bloomfield, 67, is tasked with leading the institution during a time when…
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Italy Tells The Story Of Its Jewish People In New Museum
“The story of Jews in Italy is really an Italian story,” Dario Disegni said one recent autumn morning at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies. Disegni, president of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah, was appearing at Columbia to discuss the museum, which is also known as MEIS, opens in Ferrara…
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The Word ‘Hanukkah’ Means A Lot More Than You Think It Does
What does the word “Hanukkah” mean? For children, it often means the holiday of presents. For Tel Aviv doughnut obsessives, it means congregating on all eight days at bakeries with the most elaborate sufganiyot. For many around the world, it’s “the Festival of Lights,” when seeing menorahs in the windows of neighbors’ homes illuminates the…
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Why Are So Many Jewish Podcasts So Bad — And What Can We Do About It?
Podcasting, you may have heard, is booming. Listenership is up, so is awareness of the medium, and high-quality podcasts seem to be popping up everywhere. As with television, the medium itself has recently become more respectable, including among the Hollywood A-listers; Oscar Isaac stars in “Homecoming,” while an episode of “Reply All” is being adapted…
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That Time Two Jewish Con Artists Got Way More Than They Bargained For
During the early twentieth century, the New York–based socialist daily, Forverts, the progenitor of the very Forward you are currently reading, was the largest and most successful Yiddish newspaper in the world. Among the local, national, and international news, editorial, literary, and entertainment pieces it printed, the Forverts also commissioned original reporting on all manner…
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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…
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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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