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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Film & TV
‘Aida’s Secrets’ Opens Up A Pandora’s Box Of Family Memories
For 67-year-old Shep Shell, learning he had a brother and then meeting him for the first time in 2013 was a mind-blowing experience on many fronts. But that was just the beginning. He also learned that his mother, whom he believed had died in a German displaced persons camp in the post-World War II years,…
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Harvey Weinstein Loses His Honor — Putin And Mussolini Get To Keep Theirs
For most Americans, the words “Hollywood” and “légion d’honneur” bring to mind “The Revenge of the Pink Panther.” Among the movie’s classic scenes is when Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau is awarded the medal. By turns, Sellers punctures a drum when he draws his sword, flails at a pigeon perched on his kepi, and becomes entangled…
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Do Bar Mitzvahs Prepare Us For Adult Anxiety?
This is the third in a series of essays examining the Bar and Bat Mitzvah in America. A bar mitzvah has many meanings. Mine was simultaneously a religious ceremony, a miniature family reunion, a finish line marking the end of years of Hebrew school and — still, to this day — the largest party ever…
The Latest
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When Lin-Manuel Miranda Met Stephen Sondheim
What, exactly, has Stephen Sondheim contributed to musical theater? Lin-Manuel Miranda, in a profile of Sondheim penned for The New York Times Style Magazine, has an answer. “He is musical theater’s greatest lyricist, full stop,” Miranda writes. “The days of competition with other musical theater songwriters are done: We now talk about his work the…
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Why My Bat Mitzvah Was The Happiest Day Of My Life
This is Part 2 in a series of articles examining bar and bat mitzvahs in America. Until the day I married, my bat mitzvah was the happiest day of my life. I realize that makes me an anomaly, or at least a rare species among American Jews, whose bar and bat mitzvah experiences seem freighted…
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Books Everything You Need To Know About Jews And Chocolate Is In This Book
When one of my sons (I won’t say which, to protect his anonymity) was small, if asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, his answer was always the same: an astronaut, a chef and a daddy. I wonder how many people, asked that very question, would answer “a rabbi and a chocolate…
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Why Do We Obsess About Bar Mitzvah Torah Readings — When There’s Little Textual Basis For Them?
This is part 1 in a series of articles examining the Bar and Bat Mitzvah ritual in America. Few institutions represent the American Jewish community like the bar and bat mitzvah. It would be surprising, given this cultural emphasis, if this ritual turned out to be almost as modern as the elaborate parties that surround…
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Why The Nashville Music Scene Is More Jewish Than You Think
If Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” were rewritten with a twang and a steel guitar, it would name check the following artists: Si Siman, Barbi Benton, Nudie Cohn, Bob Dylan, Paul Cohen, Ray Benson, Kinky Friedman (that one might be in the chorus; he comes up a lot). As Sandler would have said, “They’re Jewish,…
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Los Angeles Philanthropist And Arts Advocate Eli Broad Is Retiring
Los Angeles-based philanthropist Eli Broad, 84, is set to retire from the foundation that bears his name. The New York Times reported his intended retreat from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which Broad announced on Thursday. “I am retiring,” Broad told reporters Adam Nagourney and Adam Popescu. “Now. Right now. I am just tired….
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Two Years After Arrest, Palestinian Poet Dareen Tatour Awaits A Verdict
On October 11, 2015, the Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested at her home in Reineh, a town in Israel’s Galilee. In November of the same year, in the second of Tatour’s three months in jail, Israeli prosecutors indicted her on counts of incitement to violence and support for a terrorist organization. The charges stemmed…
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Garrison Keillor Is Personally Offended That Philip Roth Hasn’t Won The Nobel Prize
If you have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2009, when Garrison Keillor’s top pick John Updike passed away and thus became ineligible for the award, and you are not named Philip Roth, you may expect to be called “a writer of migraines.” That’s the first of many insults lobbed by the former host…
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