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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Why Do We Obsess About Bar Mitzvah Torah Readings — When There’s Little Textual Basis For Them?
This is part 1 in a series of articles examining the Bar and Bat Mitzvah ritual in America. Few institutions represent the American Jewish community like the bar and bat mitzvah. It would be surprising, given this cultural emphasis, if this ritual turned out to be almost as modern as the elaborate parties that surround…
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Why The Nashville Music Scene Is More Jewish Than You Think
If Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” were rewritten with a twang and a steel guitar, it would name check the following artists: Si Siman, Barbi Benton, Nudie Cohn, Bob Dylan, Paul Cohen, Ray Benson, Kinky Friedman (that one might be in the chorus; he comes up a lot). As Sandler would have said, “They’re Jewish,…
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Los Angeles Philanthropist And Arts Advocate Eli Broad Is Retiring
Los Angeles-based philanthropist Eli Broad, 84, is set to retire from the foundation that bears his name. The New York Times reported his intended retreat from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which Broad announced on Thursday. “I am retiring,” Broad told reporters Adam Nagourney and Adam Popescu. “Now. Right now. I am just tired….
The Latest
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Two Years After Arrest, Palestinian Poet Dareen Tatour Awaits A Verdict
On October 11, 2015, the Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested at her home in Reineh, a town in Israel’s Galilee. In November of the same year, in the second of Tatour’s three months in jail, Israeli prosecutors indicted her on counts of incitement to violence and support for a terrorist organization. The charges stemmed…
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Garrison Keillor Is Personally Offended That Philip Roth Hasn’t Won The Nobel Prize
If you have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2009, when Garrison Keillor’s top pick John Updike passed away and thus became ineligible for the award, and you are not named Philip Roth, you may expect to be called “a writer of migraines.” That’s the first of many insults lobbed by the former host…
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Film & TV How I Fended Off My Own Personal Harvey Weinsteins
“Oy, this is bad for the Jews” is how my parents would have reacted to a scandal involving a Weinstein. They screened every newspaper story with that criterion. I can imagine them bemoaning that calling earthquakes Arlene, Gert, Irma, and Nate would also be “bad for the Jews.” The storm named Harvey, I’m guessing, like…
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Why I’ll Be Teaching Both ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ And This Harvey Weinstein Essay
Jewish humor, like all ethnic humor, is built upon stereotypes, and these stereotypes can often be found in anti-Semitic discourse. There is a fine line between ethnic comedy and outright bigotry, and its reception depends as much on context as on authorial intent. Ever since the early 1960s, when Lenny Bruce went public with his…
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Anne Kauffman’s New Play Sent Her To Synagogue For The First Time In A Decade
A parent has a child with a chronic illness. Obviously, that parent’s life transforms; what, exactly, does it become? That question forms the heart of Amy Herzog’s new play “Mary Jane,” which runs through October 29 at New York Theatre Workshop. Directed by Anne Kauffman and staring Carrie Coon, the play’s title character, a single…
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72 Authors Are Supporting Jill Bialosky Against Plagiarism Accusations. They’re Still Wrong.
Jill Bialosky, the poet, memoirist, novelist and executive editor at W.W. Norton & Company recently accused of plagiarism in her new memoir “Poetry Will Save Your Life,” has a long list of powerful supporters. Former poets laureate Robert Pinsky and Louise Glück, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, and some 70-odd other authors signed a Letter…
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Annie Baker, Yuval Sharon Named MacArthur Fellows
Playwright Annie Baker and opera director Yuval Sharon are among the cultural figures to be awarded 2017 MacArthur Fellowships. The Fellowships, colloquially known as “genius grants,” come with a no-strings-attached award of $625,000. They are awarded annually to between 20 and 30 Americans across a range of disciplines. The MacArthur Foundation lauded Baker, who won…
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Harvey Weinstein Is Not A Philip Roth Character, Because His Accusers Are Real
Updated, 3:30 p.m.: Mark Oppenheimer has issued an apology through Tablet for his article concerning Harvey Weinstein and Philip Roth, discussed below. Read his comments here. Harvey Weinstein can be said, definitively, to be several things: Formerly one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, a Jew, and unemployed. He can be very substantively alleged…
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