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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The Real Reason Donald Trump Loves Norway — Hint: It’s Not The Fjords
Why Norway? Well, we know why President Donald Trump wondered aloud why more people from Norway don’t emigrate to the United States in comparison to those from “shithole” countries in Africa and Latin America. It’s because only the day before Trump had met with Erna Solberg, the prime minister of Norway. The president’s attention span…
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Is An Arizona Family Haunted By A Yiddish-Speaking Ghost?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Usually, reports of alleged paranormal events feature people who suspect that their house is haunted, or believe that they’ve seen a UFO or received a signal from a long deceased relative. Rarely, however, is the main focus of such a report a Yiddish word. But that’s just…
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Philip Roth Is Immersing Himself In Jewish History, And Doesn’t Know How To Respond To #MeToo
Philip Roth, almost 85 years old and seven years into retirement, is just another Upper West Sider who might be mistaken for Bernie Sanders. Except, that is, for the persistently thwarted Nobel hopes, the all-too-timely novels about American demagoguery and the graphic and controversial portrayals of male sexuality. In a new interview with Charles McGrath…
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WATCH: Yosl Birstein Gave A Yiddish Voice To Israel’s Charms And Foibles
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Yosl Birstein was such a terrific storyteller, both in Yiddish and in Hebrew, that he eventually became a legendary figure on the Israeli radio. In this video filmed in 1994, Birstein portrays with authentic Yiddish charm and humor the various characters he met after settling in Israel:…
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The Complicated Story Of How Israelis Greet Each Other In The Morning
Tel Aviv is a city of night owls, but the Mediterranean morning sun makes it hard to sleep in, which may be why morning means hearing waitresses all over the city respond to patrons’ “Boker tov” — “Good morning” — with boker or, meaning “morning of light.” But where does that response of light come…
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Tell The Forverts About Your Favorite Heirloom
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Those of us who love Yiddish are often naturally drawn to objects of a previous era. No surprise, then, that many of us have boxes of old stuff stashed away in the attic or closet, related either to our own past or to that of a relative…
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Art 1/3 Of The Paintings In Genoan Modigliani Exhibit Were Forgeries, Art Expert Says
Amedeo Modigliani, the Sephardic Italian painter and sculptor whose work is widely thought to have helped establish Modernism, is a favorite target of art forgers. Such a favorite, in fact, that a shocking third of the artworks shown in a recent exhibit focused on Modigliani in Genoa, Italy may have been fakes. As The New…
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How the 87-Year-Old Founder of Jewish Environmentalism Helped Me Grow
Editor’s note: The following article was originally published in 2016 and has been re-published for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Everett Gendler, one of a cohort of rabbis who were active participants in the Civil Rights Movement, was jailed in Georgia alongside King. Read on for more details. I didn’t want to interview Rabbi Everett…
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EXCLUSIVE: Martin Buber Supported MLK In Letter To LBJ
Just before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the National Library of Israel has unveiled a timely letter from its Martin Buber Archive. In 1965 Buber, just before his death, joined a group of Hebrew University professors in writing to President Lyndon B. Johnson to emphasize the importance of the end of King’s brief incarceration following…
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Why ‘Shithole Countries’ Sounds A Bit More Poetic In Hebrew
If you’re wondering what “shithole countries” are in Hebrew, here’s the answer from Israeli newspaper Haaretz: medinot mechurbanot. Countries = medinot. And, well, shitty = mechurban. Of course, churban is “destruction” in Hebrew, as in the destruction of the Temple. Or Temples. For the uninitiated, churban is a college-appropriate word, but mechurban is not. Maybe…
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Dara Horn Asks The Fundamental Questions Of Life — Eternal And Otherwise
ETERNAL LIFE: A NOVEL By Dara Horn W.W. Norton & Company, 256 pages, $25.95 Growing older, we wrestle with the brevity of life, the paucity of our accomplishments, the impossible desire for more time. Beset by nostalgia or regret, we may yearn for the chance to revisit our youth armed with middle-aged wisdom. In her…
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