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 the Revolution Must Be Televised in Donald Trump’s America
To: Revolutionary Resistance Committee (Ethan Allen Division) From: Arun Chaudhary, Creative Director (Frederick Douglass Division) Re: Towards a Fourth Cinema – Materialist Tribalism in the Post-Enlightenment Counterfactual Trumpian Age Terry, It has become clear to even the most dim folks in our research department that the Trump presidency represents nothing less than the end of…
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In Utah, I Was the Grinch of Christmas Street
As we pulled into the Salt Lake City cul-de-sac, our realtor said: “So, you guys should know that this street is actually called Christmas Street by the locals. Everyone decorates and has for the past 70 years.” Though I had never hung a stocking in my life, I paid little mind to his words. The…
The Latest
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Why Jews Must Never Let Go of Their Liberalism
In these dark days of post-election despondency, I have managed to cling to a slender reed: Jewish liberalism. According to a Pew Research Center survey, Donald Trump won a majority of every other religious group: Catholics by 52% to 45% (non-Hispanic white Catholics, naturally, 60% to 37%); Protestants, 58% to 39%; evangelicals and born-agains, 81%…
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Bringing Jewish Music Back From the Ashes of Kristallnacht
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. When Hirsch Lewin was deported from Germany in 1940 after six months of suffering in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he could not have imagined that seventy-six years later, musicians in Berlin would release an album of the music he had produced. Even when Lewin founded his record…
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Why Donald Trump’s Election Is Like a Book — The Problem Is We’ve Read It Before
No matter the plot, a great novel deftly walks the knife edge between the life force and the death drive — letting the reader know that the stakes in the book, as in life, are always high. A great novel doesn’t preach or set out a situation in black and white. It is capacious enough…
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Lupe Fiasco Doubles Down on Bigotry With Anti-Semitic Rant
Lupe Fiasco took the stage last night at Denver’s Fillmore Auditorium, only to lecture his fans at length and intensify his anti-Semitic rhetoric. In the Chicago M.C.’s first show since his Dec 12 release of the track “N.E.R.D.,” which featured the lyrics, “Artists getting robbed for their publishing by dirty Jewish execs who think it’s…
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Enquiring Minds Want To Know — Could Eve Have Been Created From Adam’s Penis Bone?
Earlier this week, Esquire published an article about a new study that seeks to solve an age old mystery: What happened to our penis bones? Yes, even though some of us call erections “boners,” humans do not have penis bones, also known as bacula. The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, examined the…
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This is The Way We Need To Live in Trump’s America
What is left to be said, my Lord, that hasn’t been said already? I’ve read the editorials and the think pieces, the prognostications and eulogies for freedom. Everyone’s blaming everyone but themselves. And how many contradictory explanations for what went wrong and why and where we are now, what it means, what it portends and…
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The Secret Jewish History of ‘Fences’ Author August Wilson
The long-awaited film version of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson’s “Fences” opens nationally on Sunday, December 25. The movie is being touted as Oscar bait for Denzel Washington, who both stars in and directs the film, and for his co-star Viola Davis. (The film reprises their roles in the 2010 Broadway revival of this Pulitzer-…
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Looted Nazi Artwork Headed to Swiss Museum – Until Rightful Owners Can Be Found
After a fraught legal battle, a Munich court today determined that the art hoard of the late Cornelius Gurlitt – much of which is thought to have been stolen from its rightful owners by the Nazis – must, in accordance with Gurlitt’s will, be transferred to Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Bern. Gurlitt’s instructions had been challenged by…
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Music Dear Mariah Carey, All I Want for Christmas Is a Non-Denominational Version of Your Song
“Last Christmas,” the 1980s hit by pop duo Wham! could just as easily have been called “Last Pesach.” John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” is a Vietnam War protest, not a Christian song. And, while “White Hanukkah” is not quite as catchy as Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” there is nothing overtly…
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Culture You can buy Sukkot gift boxes that say ‘tuchus’ on Amazon
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