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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What Bar Mitzvahs For Girls Were Like In 1921
Note from translator Chana Pollack: Born in 1885 in Rakow in the Minsk region of Belarus to a family of carpenters, Berl Botwinick, the author of this essay, was the winner of the Forverts’ 1909 story contest, with a piece about Jewish American life entitled “Shabes Morning.” By 1913, Botwinick was a full time employee….
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How My Bat Mitzvah Turned Me Off Judaism
This is the fifth in a series of essays examining Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in America. On March 25, 1978, the day after my bat mitzvah, I announced to my parents that I was done with Judaism and would never again set foot in a synagogue. Some of my disgust with Hebrew school was no…
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How The ‘Alt-Right’ Normalizes White Supremacy
Making Sense of the Alt Right By George Hawley Columbia University Press, 232 pages $28.00 Since World War II, American political life has been defined, in part, by a rejection of overt anti-Semitism. Following the Holocaust and the creation of Israel, conservatives and liberals alike have largely agreed that anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitic dog whistles, should…
The Latest
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Silence Is Golden In Todd Haynes’s ‘Wonderstruck’
It’s a bizarre thing to say about a film that started life as a graphic novel, but the soundtrack is the key component of “Wonderstruck,” the new movie by director Todd Haynes. Based on the work of the same name by Brian Selznick (of “Hugo” fame), who wrote the screenplay, it traces the strangely entwined…
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Film & TV Gay And Jewish Themes Converge Once Again In ‘Torch Song’
“I have taught myself to sew, cook, fix plumbing, do taxes; I can even pat myself on the back when necessary,” Arnold Beckoff tells his mother. “All so I don’t have to ask anyone for anything. There is nothing I need from anyone except for love and respect. And anyone who can’t give me those…
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Books A Fable About a Modern King David
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The American writer Joshua Cohen’s last two books, Book of Numbers and Witz, were considerable epic novels that dealt with philosophical issues through a mix of satirical realism and grotesque fantasy. But his new book, “Moving Kings” (both a name of a company and an allegorical key),…
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When Halloween Was Just Purim For Kids
It’s difficult today to look at the orange-and-black paper scenery behind toddlers in ghost costumes and imagine just how disturbing Halloween was a century ago. For the Jewish community — coming from Europe — the devilish practices of Halloween were not only bewildering but also threatening. Yes, we could come to terms with people walking…
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Why 83 Is The New 13 For Bar Mitzvahs
This is the fourth in a series of articles examining Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in America. Jeremy Piven had one. So did the former owner of my pharmacy. And Kirk Douglas had two. Stumped? These men all stepped up to the bimah to have a second bar mitzvah. Not to be confused with the now…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History of Winnie-The-Pooh
A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories have delighted youngsters for over 90 years, as have their numerous spinoffs as TV shows, cartoons, holiday specials, movies and, of course, branded merchandise, all of which made Milne very wealthy. But the story behind the story of how Milne created the complex children’s tale and characters based on his son,…
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What A Controversial Palestinian Play Can Teach Us About Art As Resistance
The play “The Siege,” created and performed by The Freedom Theater, which is based in the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, is itself under siege. It’s the latest lightning rod in an ongoing conflict over how Israel and the Palestinian territories are represented in theatrical productions. The Palestinian play, which is currently being staged at…
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How This Pristine 15th-Century Portuguese Hebrew Bible Survived The Inquisition
COIMBRA, Portugal (JTA) — From its mountaintop perch, the University of Coimbra towers majestically over the downtown square that used to be the regional headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition. It’s a fitting location for the 737-year-old university, the seventh oldest in the world, which outsmarted and outlived the campaign of persecution against Jews and freethinkers…
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