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
‘7 Days In Entebbe’ Is About How Leftists Should Butt Out Of The Jews’ Business
They started to make movies about the 1976 Israeli special forces raid on Uganda’s Entebbe airport even before the bodies were cold. One movie aired before the end of that year. Two more came in 1977. Chuck Norris’s gloss on the story came in 1986, complete with a motorcycle-borne rocket launcher. The battle at Entebbe,…
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Film & TV Samuel Maoz Says ‘Foxtrot’ Isn’t Trying To Make Israel Look Bad
Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s vivid, memorable — and not easy to watch — film, “Foxtrot,” has already generated controversy in Israel. Minister of Culture Miri Regev has accused him of being a traitor and done everything in her power to generate a boycott against the film. Maoz has received death threats. At the same time,…
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Art Can Germany Teach Jews Anything About Israel?
Midway through the Jewish Museum Berlin’s exhibit “Welcome to Jerusalem,” a sprawling tour through the Holy City, one finds a particularly unsettling image. No, it isn’t an especially gruesome crucifixion, a battle scene of the Crusades or a photograph of carnage after a terrorist attack. The offending picture shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gripping…
The Latest
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Ta-Nehisi Coates To Take On ‘Captain America,’ In Footsteps Of Jack Kirby
Starting this summer, Ta-Nehisi Coates will take the reins of a beloved comic book series created by the Jewish cartoonists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby: “Captain America.” Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of several books, including the National Book Award-winning “Between the World and Me,” has authored Marvel Comics’ “Black Panther”…
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38 Nobel Laureates, In Letter To Erdoğan, Protest Turkey’s ‘Wrongful Conviction Of Writers And Thinkers’
Today, 38 Nobel Laureates published an open letter in The Guardian urging Turkey’s President Erdoğan to reverse course on the steady erosion of civil liberties seen under his administration since an attempted coup in 2016. The letters signatories include 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature Svetlana Alexievich, 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics Serge Haroche, 2004 Nobel…
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The Secret Jewish History Of The Kit Kat Jingle
Last March, a few days before Purim, I happened to catch a new episode of Food 52’s “Burnt Toast” podcast. The entire episode was devoted to the unusual history of what a 2003 University of Cincinnati study declared was one of the top ten earworms of all time: the “Gimme a Break!” Kit Kat jingle….
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Remembering Cynthia Heimel, Who Wrote Frankly On Sex And Womanhood
Cynthia Heimel, who frankly commented on sex, dating and the absurdities of New York City life in publications including New York Magazine, Vogue and Playboy, passed away on February 25 at age 70. In addition to her columns, Heimel wrote seven books, among them the cult classic “Sex Tips For Girls.” The Washington Post reports…
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Q & A: In ‘Back Talk,’ Danielle Lazarin Excavates Women’s Unspoken Feelings
The title story in Danielle Lazarin’s new collection, “Back Talk,” subtly articulates why young women choose to stay silent about difficult experiences. A rumor spreads about the main character’s sexual activity, and her classmates quickly condemn her without asking for her side of the story. Lazarin writes, “it’s easy to believe what you hear when…
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What Do The Paintings ‘Jacob And His Twelve Sons,’ Once A Political Weapon In England, Mean Today?
If you’d like to see the face of the biblical patriarch Jacob, or that of any one of his twelve sons, you must take a big step back to do so. The individual portraits arranged around one long, large room at the Frick Collection demand it. Nearly seven feet tall and hung roughly a yard…
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How Vashti Said No — And Faced The Consequences
Every time a scandal erupts around the sexual behavior of a powerful man, someone seems to ask, “Well, why didn’t she say no?” It so happens that the Book of Esther begins with the story of a woman who “says no,” and it demonstrates that the consequences of “saying no” can be severe: Queen Vashti…
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What It Means To Grow Up Jewish in Chicago
Growing up Jewish in Chicago means you’re perversely proud of the fact that you didn’t grow up in New York. Growing up Jewish in Chicago means you actually grew up in Chicago — not in Skokie, Evanston, Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove or any of the other suburbs where Jews started to flee when real estate…
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Culture Mamdani’s first statement on antisemitism as mayor-elect got some weird pushback
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Culture Mamdani quoted Eugene Debs in his victory speech — there’s a long Jewish history there
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Opinion The 3 profound Jewish lessons of Mamdani’s astonishing victory
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News How Mamdani became New York’s next mayor, with Jews divided between fierce opposition and fiery support
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion A single arrest has thrown the battle for Israel’s soul into sharp relief
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Culture A young Muslim woman moved in with a 96-year-old Jewish actress – and it was bashert
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Film & TV Amy Goodman has been a fearless journalist for more than four decades; she says her Jewish roots made her that way
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Yiddish גרשון ווײַסעס פּאָעטישע חידושיםGershon Weiss’ poetic surprises
אין זײַן בוך לידער פֿאַרטיפֿט זיך דער דיכטער אין פּסיכאָלאָגיע, רוחניות און צווישן־קולטורעלע פֿאַרבינדונגען.
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