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 Hasidism Still Manages To Thrive
Hasidism: A New History By David Biale & 7 co-authors Princeton UniversityPress, 896 pages, $45.00 In 1770, a young man of 18, later to be known as Solomon Maimon, traveled from Nesvizh in Lithuania to the court of Dov Ber, the foremost leader of the budding Hasidic movement, in the Polish town of Mezerich. As…
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Why Everyone Is Buzzing About The Words ‘Infest’ And ‘Civility’
Language has become a flash point of the political landscape. What did it mean when first lady Melania Trump wore a jacket bearing the words “I really don’t care, do u?” to a detention center for immigrant children? What about when President Trump said immigrants would “infest” the United States, or when pundits responded to…
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Sci-Fi Visionary Harlan Ellison Reveled In His Jewishness
Harlan Ellison, the American Jewish author of speculative fiction who died on June 27 at age 84, proved that early struggles with anti-Semitism could provide literary, as well as moral, inspiration. Ellison’s dystopian science fiction landmarks included “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” The Deathbird,” and “Angry Candy.” Born in Cleveland, he was…
The Latest
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Dressing Modestly Didn’t Mean What I Thought It Did
The very first time I was invited to a wedding by a peer, the ceremony was Orthodox. I am not Orthodox. But I knew how to dress the part. So the night before the wedding, I paraded my most modest clothing for Shmuel, an Orthodox friend. I chose an outfit I felt demonstrated that I…
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Where Jewish Rights And Human Rights Intersect And Diverge
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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Are ‘14’ And ‘88’ Nazi Dog Whistles In Border Security Document — Or Just Numbers?
Sometimes a dog whistle can be a number, not a word. The number “88” appeared in a strange context in a press release from Homeland Security calling for building a border wall, along with a headline that had a total of fourteen words — but until today, no one seems to have noticed. Today, the…
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‘The Cakemaker’ Finds Eroticism In Baking And Grief
Set in Berlin and Jerusalem, “The Cakemaker” is just another boy-meets-boy, boy-loses-boy, boy-meets-boy’s-widow, widow-falls-for-boy story. In other words, it’s unlike anything you’re likely to see this year, and an unflinching, ravishing look at a broken romantic triangle. In the film, married-with-kid Israeli businessman Oren, a frequent visitor to Berlin, falls for German baker Thomas —…
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Why A Hebrew Phrase Is Causing A Hullabaloo In Austria
Over beers in Jerusalem, a writer I know shared a fascinating linguistic tidbit from his recent research trip to Austria. He said he had heard the Hebrew phrase tohu va’vohu, from Genesis 1:2, memorably translated by Everett Fox as “wild and waste,” used in Vienna. As slang, he thought. In any case, tohu va’vohu seemed…
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Why JGirls Is More Than Just Another Teen Publication
When I was a teenager, I wasn’t at all interested in the magazines targeted to girls my age: Seventeen, Young Miss (which became YM), Sassy. They talked reverently about movies and TV shows I didn’t particularly like and bands I didn’t listen to. And the girls on the covers certainly didn’t look like me. Today,…
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CIVILITY — Why Donald Trump Has Never Used That Word
As the language of public life has declined from dinner-table English to something previously considered unprintable, the word “civility” is suddenly everywhere — except Donald Trump’s lips. While Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that she has the right to be served dinner at any restaurant, no matter what she says or does, her father,…
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How Should A Mother Be?
Motherhood By Sheila Heti Henry Holt, 304 Pages, $27 Reading Sheila Heti’s new book “Motherhood” in public presents a particular challenge: Twice, in recent days, I was asked, by people clearly unfamiliar with Heti’s work, if I’m expecting. Which I am not, thank you very much. But, even considering the potential for bruised feelings, reading…
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Opinion The new face of Holocaust denial is harder to spot — and more dangerous