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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Serena Dykman on ‘Nana’ and the State of Holocaust Education
Serena Dykman grew up hearing stories of the Holocaust: Her grandparents were survivors, and her maternal grandmother, Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, was a renowned Holocaust educator, who spoke about her experiences around the world. Years after Maryla’s death, when Serena witnessed the aftermath of anti-Semitic terror attacks in Brussels and Paris, she decided it was time to…
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Swastika Gets You In Free To This German Theater For Hitler Play. Really?
Here’s a tip: If anyone currently in hot water with a minority group tells you the last thing they want to do is offend that group, they probably have not devoted much thought to what sorts of things that group might find offensive. In 2018 alone, a California Polytechnic State University fraternity released a statement,…
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Film & TV The Nazi-Era Thriller That Got Its Director Banned From Filmmaking
Among its various achievements, the 1943 thriller “Le Corbeau” (or “The Raven”) earned its director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, a lifetime ban from filmmaking. Clouzot had made his caustic movie during the height of the Nazi occupation of France for a German-controlled production company called Continental Films, which had been created by Joseph Goebbels to pacify French…
The Latest
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Totally Gross Domino’s Pizza Celebrates Israeli Independence
Domino’s Pizza launched a line of special edition pies in Israel this week to mark the country’s 70th anniversary. What could better encapsulate Israeli independence better than falafel and shawarma on a pizza, someone in the local franchise offices surely asked. For a country whose culinary star is rising in popularity worldwide because of its…
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Music How A Jewish Teacher Helped Jay-Z Find His Passion For Language
Without the support of one Jewish sixth-grade teacher in Brooklyn, Shawn Carter might never have become Jay-Z. During a conversation with David Letterman on the former “Late Show” host’s new show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” the rapper and entrepreneur discussed how his former teacher, Renee Rosenblum-Lowden, played a critical role in fomenting his…
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In Antony Sher-Led ‘King Lear,’ Humor Becomes An Instrument Of Tragedy
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” has been a different play every time I have read or seen it. It’s a parable about the inevitable abuse of power, a vivisection of the profoundly complex relationships between parents and children, a reflection on the seemingly pre-determined cycles of violence and decay that characterize political society. It is a moral…
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Why The Ten Commandments Are Practices of Liberation
A high school teacher of mine used to entertain his class by rattling off lists of oxymorons: pretty ugly, jumbo shrimp, constant variable. Sometimes he would take the opportunity to editorialize a little: military intelligence, airplane food, liberal religion. Everybody would smirk and the class would go on. The joke relied on the notion that…
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WATCH: On Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s 75th Anniversary, Remember Heroes With ‘Hymn Of The Partisans’
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thursday April 19 marks the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In remembrance of the occasion, last week I posted a collection of various renditions of Hirsh Glik’s partisan’s song, the “Hymn of the Partisans,” on the Yiddish Forward’s video blog Oyneg Shabes….
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Want To See Chomsky, Rand, Marx And Musk Argue About Technology? Now You Can — In A Puppet Show
If you have ever sat in a critical theory lecture and wished that your professor would be replaced by a group of dapper, miniaturized historical figures who sometimes rap, there’s now a puppet show to satiate that desire. Mexican artist Pedro Reyes will debut a goofy new production, “Manufacturing Mischief,” on April 26 at the…
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How A Cult Israeli TV Show About Soccer Swept Europe (Kinda)
Who cares about Lionel Messi? Well, actually, soccer fans and players of the video game “Football Manager” do care, passionately, about the world’s greatest living soccer player, but the beauty of soccer does not come from millionaire celebrities on manicured pitches. It comes from billions of people kicking balls of all sizes on floors of…
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The Secret Jewish History of Tax Day
Like it or not — and who among us actually likes it — come April 17 (website crashes notwithstanding), you will need to have filed your income tax return with the Internal Revenue Service. Perhaps one way to feel better about the painful and often inconvenient process is to recognize that it has roots in…
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