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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America Under Nazi Rule and 8 Other Things to Read, Watch, and Do This Weekend
In the arts, it’s the time of the year when everyone’s inclined to look back. What were the best artistic moments of the year? Books? Movies? At the Forward, we’re doing that too, but we’re also thrilled about what’s in store artistically in the future. That starts with this week, which brings great new book…
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The Audacity of Writing the Netflix Barack Obama Biopic
The man who famously begged his toddler to Go the Fuck to Sleepis back with a project that sounds Presidential by comparison. That’s not a slight; Adam Mansbach’s the screenwriter behind “Barry,” a new film about a bookish Columbia junior who – one day – will become the 44th President of the United States. As…
The Latest
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Lupe Fiasco Drops an Anti-Semitic Track — Then Makes It Worse
Chicago native Lupe Fiasco, who has been called “one of the greatest MCs to ever grace the mic,” is facing controversy over the anti-Semitic lyrics in his recently released track “N.E.R.D.” a low-tech freestyle over J. Cole’s “Everybody Dies.” The track, whose sole purpose seems to be to indulge in some standard, if justified, hip-hop…
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Ezra Jack Keats Honored With Tribute to ‘The Snowy Day’
As 2016 winds down to a chilly close, it’s time to say “Happy 100th Birthday” to Ezra Jack Keats, the celebrated author of “The Snowy Day.” The classic book for children, published more than 50 years ago, is a tender story of a young African-American boy — clad in a now iconic red-hooded snowsuit — as he…
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Does Google Want Us To Think That Nazis Are Cool?
On Tuesday, Philosopher Nolen Gertz (whose twitter account you should definitely follow if you don’t already) tweeted the following picture (I did my own search to verify – it’s real): Here’s what’s happening in the photo: if you type in the words “Nazis are” into Google, the site will automatically suggest the four following searches:…
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This Jewish Lesbian Activist Helped Take Down a Carjacking Ring — and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
The night Miriam Ben-Shalom helped take down a Milwaukee carjacking ring started, incongruously, at the theater. On October 22, Ben-Shalom, a lesbian activist well-known for her groundbreaking challenges to the military’s ban on gay and lesbian servicepeople, was on a date with her life partner when the duo’s car was threatened at Milwaukee’s Metro Hotel….
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Harper Lee Warned Us About Donald Trump — But We Weren’t Listening
Harper Lee tried to warn America. Twice. The first time she was redirected, politely, to take her nascent characters in a different direction. Lee accepted the editorial advice and produced “To Kill a Mockingbird,” an instant feel-good classic about how great white people can be to and for others. Central to this mythology is Atticus…
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Meet the Holocaust Lawyer Suing the FBI Over Clinton Email Investigation
Los Angeles-based lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg is best known for his work on the restitution of art stolen during the Holocaust; his quest to assist the late Maria Altmann regain Gustav Klimt paintings belonging to her family from the Austrian government was dramatized in the 2015 film “The Woman in Gold,” in which he was…
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Nato Green and San Francisco Activists Give Nancy Pelosi a New Spine — Literally
Perhaps even more disheartening than the prospect of a Trump-induced apocalypse is the reaction of the Democratic party as it stampedes towards that Apocalypse, in what often looks like a desperate race to see who can capitulate first and farthest to the new regime. Americans are being asked to “reunite a divided country,” “end the…
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Was Jill Stein’s Recount Always Destined For Spectacular Failure?
Well, in perhaps the least surprising news of the week, Jill Stein’s recount has come to an inconsequential end. You may remember that back in November, Stein and the Green Party filed for election recounts in three states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Of the three, only Wisconsin actually ended up conducting a recount. The results?…
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Did This Novel Foretell America Under Trump?
One morning back in early January, 2015, I sat down to write the novel that would become “Tell Me How This Ends Well.” I wanted to write something that explored American Jewish identity and that captured what it meant to be living through great political unrest and a sharp rise in anti-Semitism here at home…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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