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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How Fight Over African Immigrants Is (Literally) Dividing Houses In Israel
The refugee crisis in Israel is personal for many Israelis. In South Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood, where most residents have modest incomes, one house has two signs — half the house calls for letting refugees stay; the other calls for sending them out of Israel. One sign reads: “South Tel Aviv Is Against the Expulsion.”…
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Film & TV A Film About The Blight Of Anti-Semitism Dominated Austria’s Box Office — In 1924
In the end, the Jews come back. They’re warmly dressed, smiling, clean and apparently none the worse for wear. It’s a convivial scene, a meeting between men who misunderstood each other but never meant harm. Two young girls in light-colored dresses present flowers, in recognition and appreciation: We’re so glad you’re here. The end of…
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Film & TV What Movies Do You Need To Watch To Understand America?
What movies make essential viewing for someone seeking to understand the United States? Ask Martin Scorsese, and he might say — as he did, per a Film Journal International report, at a recent panel discussion in New York — that movies that meet the criteria “look squarely at the struggles, violent disagreements and the tragedies…
The Latest
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Sadly, The Ku Klux Klan Was A Lot More Mainstream Than You Think
Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s By Felix Harcourt University of Chicago Press, 272 Pages, $45 The “alt-right” is alarming, partly because it is youthful. American conservatism often presents itself stodgily: middle-aged men wearing bow ties or affecting English accents; clean-shaven pastors (also men) delivering clean, safe sermons; stiff, suited military…
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Did Simon & Garfunkel Write The Jewish ‘Sgt. Pepper?’
In the late spring of 1967, the release of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” hit the world like a paisley paint bomb. Its psychedelic splatters were especially evident in England, where pop artists of all stripes immediately seized upon the album’s heady mixture of lysergic wonder and Victorian nostalgia as a new…
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We Were More Than Just Slaves In Egypt
Somewhere between the charoset and the matzo ball soup, the Passover Hagaddah makes a somewhat strange request: “In each generation, every person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally came forth from Egypt.” It’s not enough to merely remember that our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. We need to connect with that memory…
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Superman May Tell A Jewish Story — But It’s Not The One You’d Expect
Is Superman Jewish? Superman, the superhero who defends Metropolis and masquerades by day as the journalist Clark Kent, was born on Krypton. But he immigrates to Earth, just as many Jewish-Americans left their homes to come to the United States. Superman’s adoptive parents, the Kents, find him in a spaceship far from home — just…
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How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Became RBG
During his eight years in the White House, President Bill Clinton appointed more Jews to high-level administration positions than had any other president. Of special historic significance, Clinton was the first president to appoint two Jews to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. The first court vacancy came within six weeks…
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Film & TV Movie News: The Meta-Nostalgia of “Ready Player One,” Corey Feldman Survives a Stabbing
Do you remember when Ridley Scott directed a film about Exodus, featuring Christian Bale as Moses? I didn’t until about five minutes ago, when “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2014) came up in a Google search. I am dumbstruck as to why I went to go see it in theaters, but I have a feverish memory…
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Are These The Best Biblical Novels Of All Time?
With Passover fast approaching, “Exodus” has been on my mind. No, not the biblical story; the 1958 novel by Leon Uris that served as a sort of bible to the generation of American Jews who had survived the Holocaust, as well as their children. My mom used to carry a tattered copy to the beach…
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My First Pesach In America — In 1883
This story was originally published in the Forward on April 7, 1936 Once upon a long time ago, 53 years ago in late April 1883, I found myself in my new hometown of New York City, about to spend my first Pesach in America. I’d disembarked from my ship ten months prior in June of…
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