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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Rama Burshtein Has A Fundamental Belief In Marriage
In “The Wedding Plan,” writer-director Rama Burshtein’s follow-up to her debut feature “Fill The Void,” a Hasidic Jewish woman named Micha gives herself less than a month to find true love, after which she plans to give up on marriage. As with her previous film, Burshtein focuses on the topic of marriage among the Haredi…
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Is ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Anti-Feminist?
Hulu’s television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” has gained general acclaim as a feminist manifesto for our times. But critic and novelist Francine Prose isn’t buying it. Writing in The New York Review of Books last week, Prose wrote that the show, which explores a fictionalized future United States in which…
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The Velvet Underground & Nico: A (Belated) 50th Anniversary Reading List
I remember the first time I ever really listened to Lou Reed. I was around 12 years old and I had recently come into possession of one of the old record players collecting dust at my grandmother’s house. I owned (really, stole from my dad) three records – “Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly,” “Led Zeppelin II,”…
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Israel’s Book Fair Cuts Are Devastating To Readers
Forty communities in Israel, all located far away from major cities, will not be participating in this year’s Shavua HaSefer, or “Week of the Book” program due to funding cuts — and the news has prompted an outcry from writers and community leaders who say this will be devastating to readers. Shavua HaSefer, a program…
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How Does Ben Platt Handle Pressure Of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’? Ask His Rabbi
At 23, Ben Platt is a Broadway star, a member of Time’s 2017 list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People, and generally expected to win a 2017 Tony Award. The son of theater and film producer Marc Platt, the actor has been immersed in musical theater effectively since birth, but his big break has…
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New Novel Will Imagine Hillary Rodham Without Bill Clinton
Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld has rewritten Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and the life of former first lady Laura Bush. Now, she has a new subject: Hillary Rodham Clinton. As part of a three-book deal with Random House, Sittenfeld, who is half-Jewish, will write a novel imagining what the former Secretary of State, senator, and first…
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Art Even In World’s Smallest Jerusalem, Israelis Can’t Parallel Park
On the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, a massive model railroad tribute in New York City’s Times Square displays the religious, archaeological and architectural diversity of Israel’s capital – while also playfully pointing out that many Israelis still drive like schmucks. At Gulliver’s Gate, a new Manhattan tourist attraction that officially opened on…
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Facing Euthanasia, A WWII Survivor Relives Her Dramatic Life
The Longest Night By Otto de Kat Translated by Laura Watkinson MacLehose Press, 168 pages, $22.99 Emma, the sympathetic protagonist of Otto de Kat’s “The Longest Night,” is 96 and ready to say goodbye to her life. But first she will relive it, re-experiencing her emotions, debating her choices. A nurse is at her side,…
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On Thomas Pynchon’s 80th Birthday, Celebrate His Greatest Jewish Moments
The famously enigmatic novelist Thomas Pynchon, whose works include “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Inherent Vice,” is a WASP; one of his ancestors rode into England with William the Conqueror. Still, some of the National Book Award winning author’s most memorable moments have been Jewish. In honor of his 80th birthday yesterday, here they are. 1) When…
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Billy Joel Is 68 Today — And His Music Is Still Terrible
What does the typical Billy Joel fan look like? It’s a serious question. We can, I think to at least a small degree of accuracy, guess what the typical Sex Pistols fan looked like back in their heyday, or the typical Spice Girls fan in theirs. But, what about Billy Joel? His music is so…
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Art Monsters, Monsters And More Monsters In a Thrilling Graphic Tale
Last night, trying, excitedly, to summarize “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” Emil Ferris’s debut graphic novel — or at least Part 1 of it — for my husband, I hit upon an obstacle: The book, which takes the form of a spiral-bound, three-hole-punch sketchbook/detective case study, kept by 10-year-old Chicagoan Karen Reyes, is kind of,…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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Music Remembering Ozzy Osbourne’s Jewish vow renewal
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Fast Forward Top leaders resign from Friends of the IDF amid internal reckoning
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