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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Jessica Cohen, David Grossman’s Translator, To Donate Man Booker Winnings To Israeli Human Rights Group
Jessica Cohen, Israeli novelist David Grossman’s longtime translator, will donate half of her share of the pair’s Man Booker International Prize winnings to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. B’Tselem, which operates in the West Bank, states its primary mission as being “to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government,…
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So, How Do You Observe Shabbat In Reykjavik?
Shabbat lasts three days in Reykjavik, Iceland, as I discovered when I found myself there for a writing conference. Shabbat began at 11:16 p.m. on Friday night, according to Chabad’s ever-helpful online calendar that lists candle-lighting times around the world, and finally ended at 1:27 on Sunday morning. Travelers to Iceland in summer often remark…
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EXCLUSIVE: Meet David Grossman, Israel’s Conscience And Man Booker Prize Winner
‘Almost in every book I write there is an individual facing an outer arbitrariness,” David Grossman told me one cold morning shortly before the weather turned to rain. His point was reinforced by the chaos behind him: It was a Monday, and outside, on New York City’s Lexington Avenue, a series of harried workers rushed…
The Latest
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David Grossman Wins Man Booker International Prize
Israeli novelist David Grossman and his translator, Jessica Cohen, have won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for “A Horse Walks Into a Bar.” Delighted to announce our #MBI2017 winner is David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into a Bar translated by Jessica Cohen – https://t.co/AZQPkQiKfp pic.twitter.com/z441PP3DiC — Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) June 14, 2017 Both…
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Teju Cole’s New Book Defies Categorization
I’ve started this review three or four times by now, and each time I’ve deemed my writing inadequate and started over again. The book, quite frankly, needs to be seen for itself. Like all great works, it defies paraphrase – it cannot be brought under the dominion of a single interpretation. But it is the reviewer’s…
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‘Indecent’ To Close On Broadway
Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” will close on Broadway on June 25. The play was Vogel’s Broadway debut. Director Rebecca Taichman, who co-created the show with Vogel, won this year’s Tony Award for best direction of a play. “Indecent” isn’t the only play to announce an early closing following the Tony Awards. Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat,” also her…
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Film & TV When ‘All In The Family’ Took On The ‘Alt-Right’
‘All in the Family,” which ran from 1971 to 1979, may soon be rebooted. The show’s creator, 94-year-old Norman Lear, is in talks with Sony Pictures Television to bring back not only this show, but also a few other popular Lear sitcoms. The plan is to take actual scripts from the shows and remake them…
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Did Bob Dylan Plagiarize His Nobel Lecture — From Sparknotes?
You would not be blamed for weeping over the news that Bob Dylan, an already-controversial recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, may have plagiarized part of the Nobel Lecture he gave in acceptance of the prize from Sparknotes. Yes, really: Sparknotes. The news was broken by Slate’s Andrea Pitzer, who took on the…
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FICTION: A Drop of Sunflower Oil
During our first days and weeks in Israel we readily absorbed a dozen or so Hebrew words, which spiced up our ordinary lives with exotic new sounds and smells. Among them was the term madrich, which means “guide” and was to play a substantial role in our lives. I would go so far as to…
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Corporations Don’t Actually Care About Julius Caesar, Art Or You
There is a point that must be made: Corporations are not your friends. I am writing here in reference to the current Shakespeare in the Park production of “Julius Caesar” in which the titular character is portrayed by an actor who dresses and acts conspicuously like Donald Trump. I haven’t seen the play, so I…
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This Artist Wanted Her Work Destroyed — Thankfully It Wasn’t
‘Occasionally / A human being / Saw my light / Rushed in / Got singed / Got scared / Rushed out,” Florine Stettheimer once wrote in a poem titled “Occasionally.” The full text of that poem, a lush yet minimal explication of what it feels like to be unknowable, occupies a final wall in The…
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