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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Film & TV
How ‘BlackkKlansman’ Abandons Crucial Conversation About Race and Complicity
As I watched “BlackkKlansman” in a Colorado theater filled with white folks, I felt bored and extremely irritated. While Spike Lee’s latest joint is aesthetically beautiful, the content feels boring and reductive. I don’t think any black or Jewish person needs a flashy movie just to tell them that the Klu Klux Klan is dangerous….
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“American History X” Director Tony Kaye’s Newest Film Will Star A Robot
Talk about your inclusion riders! Director Tony Kaye is hoping to bring greater representation for robots in film by casting an artificially intelligent actor in his newest feature, “2nd Born.” The idea, co-conceived by the film’s producer Sam Khoze, is designed to get the attention of the Screen Actors Guild, the motion picture actor’s union,…
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TZEDEK: What Does ‘Justice’ Really Mean Anyway?
With all eyes on the U.S. Supreme Court, now is the time to think about justice — both the noun and the idea. For centuries, tzedek, the Hebrew word for justice, and its close relative, tzedakah, charity, have attracted the great minds of Judaism, from the prophet Isaiah to Maimonides — what we might think…
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Meet The Radical Nurse Who Joined The Spanish Civil War
In the summer of 1936, when Ruth Rebecca Davidow was 25, American newspapers began to report political chaos in Spain: General Francisco Franco had launched a coup against the democratically-elected Spanish Republic with support from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Less than a year later, Davidow, a working-class Jewish nurse, set sail for Spain to…
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Art For Israelis, These Photos Are Most Iconic
Google the words “iconic Israeli photo,” and a predictable image comes up. It is the photograph of the three awestruck Israeli paratroopers against the Western Wall, taken just after Israel captured it from Jordan in 1967. Photographed by David Rubinger, who died last year, the picture symbolizes Israel’s triumph in the Six Day War, a…
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Film & TV “Memoir Of War” Brings Occupied France To Life
There are moments in “Memoir of War” where you’d be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu. I’ve seen this empty Paris cityscape before in Antonioni’s “L’Eclisse.” I’ve endured this long, tracking shot through a crowd in Godard’s “Weekend.” I’ve heard the consonant voiceover in Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour.” But if you look…
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Film & TV Yes, Sci-Fi Has An Anti-Semitism Problem — But Not The One You Think
Science fiction universes ought to aspire to “Star Trek’s” charge to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” So why do so many works of sci-fi seem content to timidly remain with the same ugly stereotypes we have here on earth?…
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This Actor Tackles Jewish Stereotypes — By Performing Them
Superstitions are strange things that often produce even stranger talismans. In Poland, one common type of good-luck token comes in unsettling forms: Paintings, magnets and statues of Jewish people, dressed like Shalom Aleichem characters, counting out gold coins. It sounds like a throwback to a darker time, but, much like the mascot of the Cleveland…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Robert De Niro
Actor Robert De Niro, who turns 75 years old August 17, is perhaps best known for playing the roles of Italian gangsters and assorted crazies in his much lauded, 55-year career in film. An entire subgenre of his work, however, has been devoted to portraying Jewish characters: gangsters and otherwise. Far from being typecast in…
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How Jewish Rights Became Human Rights
Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century By James Loeffler Yale University Press, 384 pages, $32.50 Following Winston Churchill’s prediction in 1942 that the war against fascism would “end with the enthronement of human rights,” the phrase, which had rarely been used in the discourse of international law, began to gain currency….
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Film & TV A Most Unnatural Experiment With Nature And Nurture
“It’s a lot darker than a Disney movie,” Paula Bernstein says to a chirpy talk show host who has just compared the magical coincidences of her separated-at-birth story to a fantasy from the wonderful world of Uncle Walt. The host is gobsmacked by the facts that Paula and her identical twin sister Elyse Schein both…
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