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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Q & A: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs Biographer, Discusses New Book On Da Vinci
Did it ever occur to you, upon encountering a woodpecker, to wonder about the structure of its tongue? If so, congratulations: You may be the next Leonard da Vinci. Well, only if you’re also curious about some other things: How to divert a river, say, or walk on ice, or measure the sun, or turn…
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120 Years Of Forward History
As the Forward celebrates its 120th anniversary, we’ve wondered: What would our founder, the fiercely independent Ab Cahan, think of the Forward now? How would the restless mind behind the pioneering Yiddish broadsheet see today’s 24/7, digital-first news operation and acclaimed monthly magazine? A trip through time might evoke some answers. Cahan launched the Forward…
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Rob Reiner Talks Judaism, Movies And ‘Home Shuling’
(JTA) — By his own admission, Rob Reiner was not the right person to direct “LBJ,” a film biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. “I had a lot of trepidation,” he said in a telephone interview with JTA. In addition to a successful career as an actor, Reiner is…
The Latest
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Leonard Bernstein: Classical Music’s Jewish Walt Whitman At 100
There’s a theory that Walt Whitman’s memory rises in public awareness when his ideal of inclusive democracy sinks from view, that it returns us to our faith that all Americans can become parts of the whole. The same might be said of Leonard Bernstein, who was surely the most Whitmanesque figure that America ever gave…
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Film & TV The ‘Last Jewish Writer In Hungary’ Returns To 1945
Set in post-Holocaust Hungary, “1945” is a stunning, black and white film which explores the culpability and dread that is aroused among local Christians, many of whom were Nazi collaborators, when two Orthodox Jews arrive in town on an unspoken mission. The timing for this multi-award winning film couldn’t be more on target, say writer-director…
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Art The Jewish Community Still Discriminates Against Bastards. These Artists Are Demanding Change.
Inside a small room in Jerusalem, four artists are taking on one of the most deep-rooted taboos in Judaism: That of the mamzer, the illegitimate child. A mamzer is someone born as the result of a sexual relationship forbidden in the Torah. Translated in English as “misbegotten” (according to the JPS Tanakh, but also commonly…
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Every Word Nerd Is Looking Up ‘Indictment’ — But Why Is It Spelled That Way?
For word nerds, checking up on what’s hot in dictionary look-ups can be an addictive form of procrastination. As of noon today, these were the top five on Merriam-Webster, along with their super-quick definitions: conspiracy: An agreement to commit an illegal act collusion, indictment: Two Latin-based legal terms dossier: a file containing detailed records debase:…
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Was Bob Dylan At His Best When He Was Christian?
I recently attended an alumni reunion at the Berkshires summer camp where I worked in the kitchen in the 1970s. More than one person came up to me at the reunion and said, “I’ll never forget how upset you were when Bob Dylan became a born-again Christian.” When early in the summer of 1979 it…
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Exactly How Did Hitler Become Hitler Anyway?
Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi By Tom Weber Basic Books, 464 pages, $35 Today, historians are in the unfortunate position of having to describe new books on the Nazi era as “timely.” This description is especially apt for Tom Weber’s new book, “Becoming Hitler.” Had it appeared prior to Donald Trump’s election in…
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30 Years Before Trump, Tarkovsky Foresaw The Apocalypse
By the time that Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky created his nuclear war parable, “The Sacrifice” (1986), currently playing at the Quad in a new 4K restoration, he had been exiled from one of the Cold War’s superpowers and had been thoroughly nonplussed by the other. Filmed in Sweden, in geographic and spiritual retreat from Moscow…
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Film & TV In A Predominantly Christian Country, Why Is Jewish Humor So Popular?
Jewish Comedy: A Serious History By Jeremy Dauber W. W. Norton & Company, 416 pages, $28.95 Jews are hilarious. We know this, or at least think we do. Just look at all the Jewish cut-ups out there. At the moment, Judd Apatow, Jenji Kohan, Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman are some of the top performers…
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News That whites-only, no Jews allowed Arkansas community is legal, says state’s attorney general. How?
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Opinion Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear
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Film & TV How Jon Stewart evolved on Israel — at least on ‘The Daily Show’
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Opinion As an Israeli political scientist, I resisted thinking this war was a genocide. Here’s what changed my mind
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