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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He Fought Polar Bears And Nazis And Was Called ‘The Most Unique Jew Alive’
On December 20, 1934, the New York Jewish Daily Bulletin’s Michel Kraike published an article about one Peter Freuchen: “Eight feet tall, weighing close to 330 pounds, with a head like a grizzly bear’s and a thick, square red beard.” Born in Denmark, Freuchen held a series of professions that, to modern ears, might sound…
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Film & TV Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has An Opinion On Everything, From Feminism To Fish
The documentary “RBG,” a chronicle of the life and career of the United States’ most pop culture-prominent Supreme Court Justice, appears to have made a decisive impact at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking with NPR’s Nina Totenberg after the film’s premiere, presented opinions on Kate McKinnon and the #MeToo movement; as…
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Music Happy Birthday And Farewell To Neil Diamond, Retiring At 77
There are certain things in this life that I pretty much take for granted: Snow will fall in December. A new baseball season will begin in April. And if he’s not already touring somewhere as we speak, Neil Diamond will be going on tour again soon. Which is why the announcement that the multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter…
The Latest
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In Israel and New York, Jews Do Battle In Conversation
It’s often said that Jews are a particularly talkative bunch — “the most verbal group in human history,” according to Alfred Kazin in his 1969 review of Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” itself a work of Semitic logorrhea par excellence. This is a pervasive idea, based on a certain reading of Jewish history. In the beginning…
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Hollywood’s Oldest Working Jewish Actress Dies At 105
Old Jewish character actors never die, they just stop going on casting calls. Charles Lane (born Charles Levison; 1905–2007) a mainstay in small roles in Frank Capra films and on the TV series “I Love Lucy,” kvetched during his hundredth birthday celebration that his performing career had recently slowed down. Connie Sawyer, who died on…
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Looking for God, Notebook in Hand
This article was originally published in the Forward on January 2, 1998 One of the more refreshing Jewish books of the ’90s was “The Jew in the Lotus,” Rodger Kamenetz’s account of a meeting between the Dalai Lama and eight American rabbis. This encounter, the first between representatives of the two ancient traditions, was occasioned…
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Jewish Refugee Reunites With Neighbor — 80 Years Later
“We’ll Meet Again,” which begins airing on Tuesday January 23, on PBS, hosted by Ann Curry, offers a new spin on the popular genealogical series, “Finding Your Roots.” Instead of searching a family’s history, the hunt is on to reunite long-lost friends or people who somehow impacted the guest’s life. There are a half-dozen episodes…
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Brooklyn’s Joyva Has A Helluva Halvah Story
My grandfather used to introduce himself this way: “I’m Danny Oringel and I’m in coffee.” He was from a time and place where you didn’t “work” at something, you were “in” something. My friend’s grandfather was in mattresses. Another was in meat. Over time, these businesses typically were sold or ceased operations as the younger…
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The Three Late Luminaries Who Shaped New York’s Golden Mid-Century Culture
On the cusp of the new year, three Jewish cultural pioneers who helped shape New York’s identity died within days of each other. Their loss reflects the passing of an era. Each came into his own between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, a time when, as Dan Wakefield wrote in his memoir “New York in the…
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Liberal New York Jews Must Engage With Orthodox — History Proves It
JEWISH NEW YORK: THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF A CITY AND A PEOPLE By Deborah Dash Moore NYU Press, 512 Pages, $30 You see it everywhere now: anxiety about America’s Jewish future. Panel discussions and synagogue sermons and angsty op-eds, alarmed missives with a touch of bewilderment, all wondering about the right way forward. We’re intermarrying,…
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Julius Lester, Beloved Author, Activist And Scholar, Dies At 78
(JTA) — Julius Lester, an African-American singer, scholar and activist whose conversion to Judaism in 1982 came as a shock to those who only remembered his role in a bitter, racially charged school strike in New York’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood in 1968, has died. His family announced his death, which came after a brief hospitalization,…
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