Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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Roz Chast Loves Everything About Manhattan — Even The Cockroaches
As Roz Chast informs readers in her new book, “Going Into Town: A Love Letter To New York,” from Bloomsbury USA, grilled cheese is a blissfully safe food to eat in the gustatory wilds of Manhattan. That, and eggs: “YOU CANNOT GO TOO WRONG,” she writes. The instruction’s uncontained maternal anxiety is charming; “Going Into…
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Film & TV How Monty Hall Made A Deal For Jewish Charity
Although Monty Hall, who died on September 30 at the age of 96, is chiefly remembered for co-creating and hosting the long-lasting TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” first broadcast in 1963, his most enduring legacy may be service to Jewish charities. Born Monte Halparin in Winnipeg to Orthodox Jewish parents, Hall would follow…
The Latest
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A Gloria Steinem Biopic Is Coming, Thanks To Julie Taymor And Sarah Ruhl
Gloria Steinem, author and feminist activist, has done quite a bit for women. Now, a Jewish woman will bring her story to the big screen. Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor, mastermind of the acclaimed Broadway adaptation of “The Lion King,” will direct an adaptation of Steinem’s 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road” for June…
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Can You Leave The Orthodox And Remain Culturally Hasidic?
Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America By Samuel Heilman University of California Press, 336 pages, $26.95 A friend of mine, the blogger once known as “Shtreimel,” author of the popular (but now-defunct) website “A Hassid and a Heretic,” was a member of the Belz Hasidic sect when he began,…
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In ‘The Treasurer,’ A Young Jewish Playwright Takes On A Foreign Concept: Hell
Some arrangements seem unchangeable: Life ends in death, children — however reluctantly — love their parents, Jews don’t believe in hell. Not so in Max Posner’s new play “The Treasurer,” which opened at Playwrights Horizons this week. The title refers to a character known as The Son, who takes charge of his mother’s finances after…
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Remembering Arlene Bronstein: Paragon of Persistence and Grace
To speak of the quotidian in Yiddish we use the term yedes montik un donershtik, meaning literally, every Monday and Thursday. Arlene Bronstein took the folksy saying and wore a new groove in it; she spent the last nine years of her montik un donershtiks here at the Forward cataloguing photos, researching queries and generally…
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‘Star Trek’ Goes Less Jewish Than It Has Ever Gone Before
“Star Trek” has always embraced diversity. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future was intentionally, ideologically inclusive. The first “Star Trek” series included Asian and black crew members, at a time when that was rare on network television. Later series featured a woman captain and a black captain. The new CBS show, “Discovery” is focused…
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Rob Reiner’s War On Russia Is Doomed To Fail
“We have been attacked. We are at War,” says Morgan Freeman in a video posted last week by a new organization called the Committee to Investigate Russia, making the most of his incredible voice. Founded by director, actor, and liberal activist Rob Reiner, the organization is calling for an investigation of Vladimir Putin’s government, suggesting…
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What Was Shimon Peres’s One Final Regret?
No Room For Small Dreams By Shimon Peres HarperCollins, 240 Pages, $27.99 There remains, one year after his passing, a void in Israeli politics in the shape of Shimon Peres. The former president and prime minister was, as Amos Oz eulogized at his funeral in September 2016, a trailblazer who seemed constantly ahead of his…
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Books Why You Should Sneak-Read In Shul This Yom Kippur
My journey, both personally and professionally, in Orthodox and non-Orthodox circles alike, has introduced me to a surprising divide, one that does not map neatly onto the denominational divide but evokes diverging passions that grow more animated as one moves from right to left. Namely: The practice of reading in shul. Every year I try…
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What These Jews Will Be Sneak-Reading During High Holiday Services
When Rabbi Edward Feld was a teenager, he decided to buy a seat for High Holidays services in a synagogue where no one knew his name. Feld was raised on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and he says that there were always old synagogues that weren’t completely full even on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. By…
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Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
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Opinion The staggering hypocrisy behind Trump’s deal to free the last living American hostage
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Fast Forward Russell Brand defends Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’ music video
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion A century ago, Hitler declared war on the ‘lying press’ and targeted a feisty little newspaper — sound familiar?
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Fast Forward School vouchers would expand nationwide under federal proposal cheered by Orthodox groups
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Yiddish ווער האָט איבערגעלאָזט די קונסטווערק אין אַ פּאַרק אין סאַן־פֿראַנציסקאָ?Who abandoned this artwork in a San Francisco park?
דער שאַפֿער פֿון די ווערק, אַרי לאָשאַקאָװ, איז אומגעקומען אין פּאַריז אין 1941 בעת דער נאַצי־אָקופּאַציע.
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Fast Forward Canada, England and France vow ‘concrete actions’ over Israel’s Gaza war expansion and blockade
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