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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The insanely fascinating history of Hanukkah light
It is American Hanukkah’s perennial irony that this so-called “Festival of Lights” is both literally and figuratively outshone by the myriad Christmas lights that blanket trees and yards from well before Hanukkah begins to well after it concludes. Though observant viewers might glimpse a handful of candles by the window during the brief time that…
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Film & TV Why Yiddish Theater Works Better In America Than In Israel
Israeli actors Gera Sandler and his wife Ronit Asheri-Sandler, now starring in Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing!” with the New Yiddish Rep at the 14th Street Y, can’t help comparing New York and Israeli audiences for Yiddish-language Theater. “In New York you’ll see people of many backgrounds sitting in the theater, also a surprising number…
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Film & TV James Franco’s ‘Disaster Artist’ Follow-Up To Be Shel Silverstein Biopic
James Franco has won rave reviews for his work on “The Disaster Artist,” a Tommy Wiseau biopic he directed and in which he stars as the legendarily weird creator of “The Room.” The project has, apparently, given him the biopic bug; today, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that Franco’s next project will be a film about…
The Latest
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Should We Remove Confederate Monuments — Even If They’re Artistically Valuable?
In 1912 and 1914, The Washington Post described the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery as “a magnificent work of art” and “one of the most beautiful [monuments] in this section of the country.” Commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and celebrated with a cornerstone-laying ceremony and a formal dedication two years…
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Movie News: James Franco’s Tommy Wiseau Tribute, Early Awards Season
Still nursing your Thanksgiving food coma? Can’t handle any degree of activity more strenuous than that of sitting in a movie theater? Great: This week’s new movies come out tomorrow, so today, we have this week’s movie news. 1) James Franco’s Tommy Wiseau biopic is a hit Tommy Wiseau famously created and starred in “The…
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New York Times 10 Best Books Of 2017 Include Works By Naomi Alderman, Ron Chernow
Naomi Alderman’s novel “The Power” and Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant, “Grant,” are among The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2017. Alderman’s “The Power” won this year’s Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Times books editors wrote that the novel was “a riveting story, told in fittingly electric language, that explores…
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Playwright Israel Horovitz Accused Of Sexual Harassment, Assault By Nine Women
Playwright Israel Horovitz, the founding artistic director of Gloucester Stage Company, has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by nine women, The New York Times’s Jessica Bennett today reported. Horovitz’s accusers are all women who worked with him when they were adolescents or in their early 20s. They include the playwright Jocelyn Meinhardt, who…
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Amy Schumer Shines As ‘Shiksa Goddess’ In Steve Martin’s Dim-Watted Play
Amy Schumer, in her Broadway debut, proves herself a competent stage actress, an unsurprisingly gifted physical comedian, and, remarkably, a formidable shiska goddess. It’s just a shame the vehicle bringing her here, Steve Martin’s “Meteor Shower,” is quite so stubbornly earthbound. Martin’s latest— the multitalented onetime “Saturday Night Live” star previously wrote the absurdist comedy…
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Why We’re Living Inside The Worst Movie Ever Made
Maybe the most salient characteristic of our culture is how much of it is bad. Technological changes have allowed an unprecedented number of hacks to produce great quantities of what the parlance of the day terms “content.” At the same time, the presumed existence of a consumer with a bottomless appetite for diversion has encouraged…
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Art Director of Holocaust Museum Fears Its Lessons Are Timeless
Sara Bloomfield joined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in its early stages, years before the project turned into one of the nation’s most visited landmarks on the National Mall in Washington. Now, after serving as director of the museum for 18 years, Bloomfield, 67, is tasked with leading the institution during a time when…
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Italy Tells The Story Of Its Jewish People In New Museum
“The story of Jews in Italy is really an Italian story,” Dario Disegni said one recent autumn morning at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies. Disegni, president of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah, was appearing at Columbia to discuss the museum, which is also known as MEIS, opens in Ferrara…
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