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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Lou Reed Was A Regular Jewish Kid — And Cultural Rebel For The Ages
Lou Reed: A Life By Anthony DeCurtis Little, Brown and Company, 528 pages, $32 At first glance, Lewis Allan Reed wasn’t all that different from the other middle-class Jewish lads he grew up with in 1950s Freeport, New York. He was a diligent student and an avid tennis player; he liked to make weekend forays…
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Simon Schama, Daniel Mendelsohn Shortlisted For Baillie Gifford Prize
Simon Schama’s “Belonging: The Story of the Jews, 1492-1900” and Daniel Mendelsohn’s “An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic” have been shortlisted for this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize, one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary awards for nonfiction. The award, which comes with a prize of £30,000, or close to $40,000, was…
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How ‘E.T.’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ Reveal Steven Spielberg’s Story
Susan Lacy had a much better interview with Steven Spielberg than I did, so I’m understandably jealous. She spent about 30 hours with the director, and was able to elicit nuggets about his life and work that form the basis of Lacy’s appropriately titled documentary, “Spielberg,” which debuts on HBO Oct. 7. Like many, I’ve…
The Latest
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Critics And Writers Are Defending An Accused Plagiarist. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.
Poet, memoirist, novelist and editor Jill Bialosky, this week accused of plagiarism in her new memoir “Poetry Will Save Your Life,” has degrees from three universities. Each of them has clear standards as to what counts as plagiarism. “Reproducing another person’s work, whether published or unpublished” counts, according to Ohio University, from which Bialosky has…
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How A Father-and-Son Story Became A Real-Life Odyssey
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic By Daniel Mendelsohn Alfred A. Knopf, 304 pages $26.95 When Daniel Mendelsohn’s 81-year-old father asked if he might audit his son’s Bard College seminar on Homer’s “Odyssey,” the classicist feared that embarrassment might ensue. He wasn’t wrong. But his discomfort wasn’t the half of it. The…
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University Of Toronto Holocaust Scholar Resigns Over Racist Remark
Michael Marrus, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, resigned earlier this week after making a racist remark to a student. Last week, as The Toronto Star reported, Marrus had been sitting at lunch with three of the College’s graduate students, known as junior fellows, when head of the College…
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Who Was New York’s Best Ever Jewish Soccer Player?
Once the stomping ground of world soccer stars, Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Chinaglia (not to mention Mordechai Spiegler, Israel’s highest ever goal scorer), New York is again a formidable force in North American soccer. As well as Spiegler, the two players who might actually argue over being the best soccer player ever to play for…
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Honoring Philip Roth In Newark, Robert Caro Spoke Of Civil Rights, Power And Morality
In the future, when some scholarly young Jew flirts with bankruptcy while composing an engagingly voluminous biography of noted biographer-of-length Robert Caro, he or she might note the occasion, last week, upon which Caro took to a Newark Public Library Stage to deliver that institution’s Second Annual Philip Roth Lecture. Worth particular observation would be…
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The Secret Jewish History of Blade Runner
The long-awaited sequel to the 1982 sci-fi classic “Blade Runner” opens in theaters October 6. “Blade Runner 2049” picks up the original story 30 years after the events recounted in the original, which was set in 2019. For those who don’t remember, and for the very few who never saw it, “Blade Runner” was a…
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Poet Jill Bialosky Faces Plagiarism Accusations Over New Memoir
Poet Jill Bialosky, currently an editor at W.W. Norton and Company, has been accused of plagiarism in her recent memoir from Simon & Schuster “Poetry Will Save Your Life.” The accusations, made by poet and critic William Logan in the Tourniquet Review, center on Bialosky’s brief biographies, in the memoir, of poets whose work she…
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Masha Gessen, Elliot Ackerman Among National Book Awards Finalists
Masha Gessen and Elliot Ackerman are among the finalists for this year’s National Book Awards. Such an honor to be on this list. Thank you @nationalbook https://t.co/rjkb3yMrWd — Elliot Ackerman (@elliotackerman) October 4, 2017 Gessen’s “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” released this week, is a finalist for the award in nonfiction. Ackerman’s…
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