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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Looking for God, Notebook in Hand
This article was originally published in the Forward on January 2, 1998 One of the more refreshing Jewish books of the ’90s was “The Jew in the Lotus,” Rodger Kamenetz’s account of a meeting between the Dalai Lama and eight American rabbis. This encounter, the first between representatives of the two ancient traditions, was occasioned…
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Jewish Refugee Reunites With Neighbor — 80 Years Later
“We’ll Meet Again,” which begins airing on Tuesday January 23, on PBS, hosted by Ann Curry, offers a new spin on the popular genealogical series, “Finding Your Roots.” Instead of searching a family’s history, the hunt is on to reunite long-lost friends or people who somehow impacted the guest’s life. There are a half-dozen episodes…
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Brooklyn’s Joyva Has A Helluva Halvah Story
My grandfather used to introduce himself this way: “I’m Danny Oringel and I’m in coffee.” He was from a time and place where you didn’t “work” at something, you were “in” something. My friend’s grandfather was in mattresses. Another was in meat. Over time, these businesses typically were sold or ceased operations as the younger…
The Latest
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The Three Late Luminaries Who Shaped New York’s Golden Mid-Century Culture
On the cusp of the new year, three Jewish cultural pioneers who helped shape New York’s identity died within days of each other. Their loss reflects the passing of an era. Each came into his own between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, a time when, as Dan Wakefield wrote in his memoir “New York in the…
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Liberal New York Jews Must Engage With Orthodox — History Proves It
JEWISH NEW YORK: THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF A CITY AND A PEOPLE By Deborah Dash Moore NYU Press, 512 Pages, $30 You see it everywhere now: anxiety about America’s Jewish future. Panel discussions and synagogue sermons and angsty op-eds, alarmed missives with a touch of bewilderment, all wondering about the right way forward. We’re intermarrying,…
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Julius Lester, Beloved Author, Activist And Scholar, Dies At 78
(JTA) — Julius Lester, an African-American singer, scholar and activist whose conversion to Judaism in 1982 came as a shock to those who only remembered his role in a bitter, racially charged school strike in New York’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood in 1968, has died. His family announced his death, which came after a brief hospitalization,…
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Film & TV ‘One Of Us’ Could Win An Oscar — But Does It Really Deserve One?
Heidi Ewing’s and Rachel Grant’s documentary “One of Us,” recently shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film, portrays with compassion and thoroughness the lives and world of three young Hasidic Jews — Ari, Etty and Luzer — who have, at tremendous personal cost, abandoned their insular communities in Brooklyn and Monsey, New York…
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Film & TV The Inspiring True Story Behind The Must-Watch RBG Biopic
It’s difficult to think of a more compelling title for a Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic than that of one forthcoming in 2018: “On the Basis of Sex.” Yet that phrase, which evokes the still-relevant endeavor to ensure that women will not be treated differently than men because of their gender, was not originated by the…
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Books How Vilna’s Jews Rescued Their Books From the Nazis
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. For hundreds of years, books played a powerful role in the lives of Vilna’s Jews. The city was home to the two most influential publishing houses of religious and secular books, Romm and B. Kletskin, as well as the great Strashun Library. Several synagogues, houses of study…
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Mathilde Krim Was The Oskar Schindler Of The War Against AIDS
Oskar Schindler is celebrated for saving the lives of 1,200 imperiled people, so how can one begin to describe the achievement of Mathilde Krim, who by most accounts helped to save the lives of millions? The dauntless advocate of AIDS research, prevention, and treatment who died on January 15 at age 91, was motivated by…
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Zubin Mehta’s Replacement Is 29-Year-Old Wunderkind
Zubin Mehta has been the musical leader of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for four decades. In the next two years, The New York Times reports, he will cede his directorship of the Philharmonic to Lahav Shani, who has been alive for only three-quarters of that time. Shani, 29, a pianist and conductor, made his first…
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