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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When Smart Rabbis Make Dumb Videos We Must Demand Better
Recently, there’s been a trend to act as if the rising anti-Semitism across the Western world sprang from nothing. Not that there are no reasons behind the rise, but simply that before the resurgence of far right movements, anti-Semitism was simply not around in any meaningful capacity. We know this, of course, to be false….
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Books 7 Books Every Jewish Feminist Should Read
It’s no secret that the second wave of the Feminist movement was propelled forward partially by Jewish women. Decades after some of the books written by these women were published, they continue to inspire women of all faiths and cultures to step and fight for the cause. Below, in no particular order, are 7 books…
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Jane Jacobs’s Epic Battle With Robert Moses Takes To Times Square Billboards
In the 20th century, New York City was shaped by city planner Robert Moses, activist Jane Jacobs, and their notorious battles. Now the city’s most famous district, Times Square, will pay homage to the impact of their clashes. As DNA Info reports, a background animation to the opera “A Marvelous Order,” which chronicles the conflict,…
The Latest
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See Nuremberg’s Last Living Prosecutor — And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
The last living prosecutor to assist in the Nuremberg trials, a set of military tribunals that brought Nazi leaders to justice, learned an important lesson from the work: “War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people.” Ben Ferencz told that to Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes,” which will air an interview with Ferencz this Sunday….
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Books Idra Novey Wins Sami Rohr Prize For Literature
(JTA) — Idra Novey, author of the novel “Ways to Disappear,” won the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She takes home $100,000 for winning the prize, which was announced Wednesday by the Jewish Book Council at a ceremony at New York’s Jewish Museum. Her book explores a translator’s search for a missing…
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Vladimir Putin Watched ‘Dr. Strangelove’ With Oliver Stone
If you were given exclusive access to Russian president Vladimir Putin, how would you make use of that time? Filmmaker Oliver Stone had an interesting answer to that question: Show him Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” Yes, really. As The Washington Post reported, Stone, interviewing Putin for the upcoming Showtime feature “The Putin Interviews,” showed the…
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How Philippe Halsman Reinvented The Portrait
I’ve never truly believed the idea that portrait photography can tell us a clear truth about its subject. When we look at a portrait of Samuel Beckett, for instance, we might read a certain depth of life, and a certain hawk-like incisiveness, into the nooks and crannies of his face. But despite the expressiveness of…
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Jean Stein, Best-Selling Oral Historian, Dies In Apparent Suicide
Jean Stein, a best-selling author of oral histories, passed away on Sunday, April 30. As The Guardian reported, Stein apparently jumped to her death from the 15th floor of a Manhattan high-rise. She was 83 years old. Stein’s books included “Edie: An American Girl,” in which she brought together the voices of Edie Sedgwick’s friends,…
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In The AIDS Pandemic, William Hoffman Saw Parallels To The Holocaust
The American playwright and editor William Moses Hoffman, who died on April 29 at age 78, expressed his Judaism through dramatizations of the tragic AIDS pandemic. As Jonathan Friedman’s “Rainbow Jews: Jewish and Gay Identity in the Performing Arts” notes, “Among the first dramatists to write plays about AIDS were gay Jews.” At a time…
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Shobha Nehru, A Quiet Witness To History, Dies At 108
Shobha Nehru, who died on April 25 at age 108, proved that humanistic ties to family roots never fade. Born Magdolna Friedmann in Budapest in 1908, she witnessed Hungarian anti-Semitism, which led her father to change the family name to the less Jewish-sounding Forbath. This new appellation led to a school nickname, Fori, which she…
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Film & TV Leo Tolstoy, ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and ‘Oslo’ Lead Tony Nominations
The 71st Tony Award nominations have been announced, led by “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” and “Hello, Dolly!” Here’s the full list: Best Play: “A Doll’s House, Part 2” “Indecent” “Oslo” “Sweat” Best Musical: “Come From Away” “Dear Evan Hansen” “Groundhog Day The Musical” “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812”…
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