Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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Film & TV 8 young Jewish comedians on what ‘SNL 50’ means to them
'Saturday Night Live' may be entering middle age, but these rising Jewish comics are just getting started.
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Why Jews Can’t Remain Neutral in Trump’s America
In Philip Eil’s article “6 Jewish Historians Tell Us What To Expect in 2017 and Beyond,” he speaks to Professor Riv-Ellen Prell, who says that Jews will not be able to play it safe this time around. Riv-Ellen Prell Professor Emerita of American Studies at the University of Minnesota Author of “Women Remaking American Judaism”…
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Why We Probably Shouldn’t Worry About New Pogroms
In his article “6 Jewish Historians Tell Us What To Expect in 2017 — and Beyond,” Philip Eil spoke to historian David Biale about how anti-Semitism was granted legitimacy in 2017. Here’s the full text of his remarks: David Biale Professor of Jewish History at University of California, Davis Author of “Not in the Heavens:…
The Latest
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You Will Soon Be Able To Visit Rome’s Jewish Catacombs
Cemeteries are naturally spooky places – fields littered with old gray stones marking dead bodies. But you know what’s spookier than cemeteries? Catacombs, those underground passages filled with human remains. For those of us that find such places more interesting than scary or disgusting, there was recently some good news out of Rome. As the…
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Mass-Reproduction Is Changing The Experience of Art. Mark Rothko Is Here To Help.
There is something that happens to a work of art when it becomes absorbed into posterity – its copies and reproductions begin to rapidly grow in number. Reproductions will always (obviously) outnumber the original, but in the case of famous works of art, they do so in such a great number that the aesthetic status of…
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The Man Who Made Those Viral Sweaters Has One For Every Jewish Holiday
Sam Barsky came to knitting by chance, perhaps a divine one: it was 1999, he’d recently dropped out of nursing school due to medical issues, and he was searching for a new purpose. He came across a yarn shop, fulfilled a longtime dream of taking an introductory knitting class, and, well, followed that thread. (Sorry.)…
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Long, Long Ago in a Jewish Fantasyland Far, Far Away
The Book of Esther By Emily Barton Tim Duggan Books, 432 Pages, $27 The medieval kingdom of Khazaria has long been used as a Jewish Zembla, or fantasyland, a shadowy alternative to unpleasant realities. In the 12th century, the Spanish philosopher Judah Halevi dreamed up a Khazar king who converted to Judaism, imagining an upside-down…
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Why Did Japan Treat Jews Differently During World War II?
During World War II, why did the Japanese refuse orders from Nazi Germany, its wartime ally, to kill all the Jews within its borders? A new book from Academic Studies Press, “Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era” addresses this question. Its author, Dr. Meron Medzini, former…
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6 Films To Watch At The New York Jewish Film Festival
On January 11th, in partnership with the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Jewish Film Festival will return for its 26th edition. The festival offers a varied look at the world of Jewish film, both in terms of genre and time period. In addition to the newer films that make up…
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Renowned Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman Heard Echoes of World War II in Trump
Polish-born Jewish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has died in his home in England at age 91, the Washington Post reported today. Bauman lived in England since 1971 after he was driven out of Poland by a purge engineered by the communist Polish secret police. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, Bauman was one…
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What I Learned From a ‘Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheist’ Like Nat Hentoff
Reading Nat Hentoff in the 1970s in the Village Voice and elsewhere, as I did, helped clue me into an essential truth: that a writer needn’t specialize in one area to the exclusion of all else. In Hentoff’s case – which was particularly inspiring to me as a budding music critic who was also obsessed…
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‘Night,’ Elie Wiesel’s Masterpiece, To Receive Star-Studded Live Reading
“If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one,” Elie Wiesel wrote in a preface to his wife Marion’s 2012 translation of his Holocaust memoir “Night.” Now, six months after his death, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene will pay tribute to…
Most Popular
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture You can buy Sukkot gift boxes that say ‘tuchus’ on Amazon
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Culture Hitler is trending on TikTok again — and they’re trying to make him seem like a nice guy
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Film & TV Netflix finally gave Jews our Hot Rabbi. Too bad every other Jew in the show sucks
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