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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Arthur Janov, The Jewish Creator Of Primal Scream Therapy
Arthur Janov, who died on Sunday October 1 aged 93, was the creator of the now largely-ignored psychotherapeutic system, Primal Scream Therapy. A dramatic psychic system, it captured the imagination of John Lennon in the 1970s and Tears for Fears in the 1980s. Though many psychotherapists disputed the efficacy of PST, an article in Vice…
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That Time Tom Petty Toured The Western Wall
Tom Petty, one of the most popular and beloved singers and songwriters in rock music since the late 1970s, died at UCLA Santa Monica Hospital on Monday, October 2, after suffering cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu. Petty, age 66, had just wrapped up a big tour with his band, the Heartbreakers, which ended…
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With ‘The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),’ Noah Baumbach Returns To His Unhappy Place
Regardless of where one is in life or how degrading one’s surroundings may become, family has the ability to dig into us in a special way that nothing else can. Noah Baumbach appears to have internalized this lesson, a sense of how those closest to us can make us more miserable than even the cold…
The Latest
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Roz Chast Loves Everything About Manhattan — Even The Cockroaches
As Roz Chast informs readers in her new book, “Going Into Town: A Love Letter To New York,” from Bloomsbury USA, grilled cheese is a blissfully safe food to eat in the gustatory wilds of Manhattan. That, and eggs: “YOU CANNOT GO TOO WRONG,” she writes. The instruction’s uncontained maternal anxiety is charming; “Going Into…
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Film & TV How Monty Hall Made A Deal For Jewish Charity
Although Monty Hall, who died on September 30 at the age of 96, is chiefly remembered for co-creating and hosting the long-lasting TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” first broadcast in 1963, his most enduring legacy may be service to Jewish charities. Born Monte Halparin in Winnipeg to Orthodox Jewish parents, Hall would follow…
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A Gloria Steinem Biopic Is Coming, Thanks To Julie Taymor And Sarah Ruhl
Gloria Steinem, author and feminist activist, has done quite a bit for women. Now, a Jewish woman will bring her story to the big screen. Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor, mastermind of the acclaimed Broadway adaptation of “The Lion King,” will direct an adaptation of Steinem’s 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road” for June…
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Can You Leave The Orthodox And Remain Culturally Hasidic?
Who Will Lead Us? The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America By Samuel Heilman University of California Press, 336 pages, $26.95 A friend of mine, the blogger once known as “Shtreimel,” author of the popular (but now-defunct) website “A Hassid and a Heretic,” was a member of the Belz Hasidic sect when he began,…
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In ‘The Treasurer,’ A Young Jewish Playwright Takes On A Foreign Concept: Hell
Some arrangements seem unchangeable: Life ends in death, children — however reluctantly — love their parents, Jews don’t believe in hell. Not so in Max Posner’s new play “The Treasurer,” which opened at Playwrights Horizons this week. The title refers to a character known as The Son, who takes charge of his mother’s finances after…
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Remembering Arlene Bronstein: Paragon of Persistence and Grace
To speak of the quotidian in Yiddish we use the term yedes montik un donershtik, meaning literally, every Monday and Thursday. Arlene Bronstein took the folksy saying and wore a new groove in it; she spent the last nine years of her montik un donershtiks here at the Forward cataloguing photos, researching queries and generally…
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‘Star Trek’ Goes Less Jewish Than It Has Ever Gone Before
“Star Trek” has always embraced diversity. Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future was intentionally, ideologically inclusive. The first “Star Trek” series included Asian and black crew members, at a time when that was rare on network television. Later series featured a woman captain and a black captain. The new CBS show, “Discovery” is focused…
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Rob Reiner’s War On Russia Is Doomed To Fail
“We have been attacked. We are at War,” says Morgan Freeman in a video posted last week by a new organization called the Committee to Investigate Russia, making the most of his incredible voice. Founded by director, actor, and liberal activist Rob Reiner, the organization is calling for an investigation of Vladimir Putin’s government, suggesting…
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