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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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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How Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ Anticipated The Holocaust
This Month Anne Reads: Metamorphosis: By Franz Kafka ‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” The famous first line of this haunting tale is hard to forget and painful to remember. From the beginning the end is clear. Gregor Samsa will be…
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Why Did ‘All The Rivers’ Cause So Much Controversy In Israel?
All The Rivers By Dorit Rabinyan Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen Random House, 288 pages, $27 By Steven G. Kellman A novel that begins with two FBI agents interrogating a Middle Eastern woman about terrorist ties might lead a reader to expect a political thriller. It is one year after the 9/11 attacks, and…
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Comedy Central Host Keeps His Act Strictly ‘Kasher’
Despite a hectic and dramatic life story, 37-year-old comedian Moshe Kasher has emerged relatively unscathed; he is a regular guest on late night talk shows, and the author of a memoir (“Kasher in the Rye”). He now hosts a new Comedy Central TV series, “Problematic With Moshe Kasher,” which aims “to solve every problem that…
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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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‘Oslo’ Wins Top Outer Critics Circle Honors
J.T. Rogers’s “Oslo,” a gripping account of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that powered the Oslo Accords, has won the 2017 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Play. The Awards, announced this morning, also honored Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s “Hello, Dolly!” as Outstanding Revival of a Musical, Steven Levenson’s “If I Forget” as Outstanding New…
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How Graphic Designer Saul Bass Drew Us Into The Movies
Graphic designer Saul Bass is one of those towering figures in American film whose name is far less well-known than his work. His work appears in the films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick. If you’ve seen “Catch Me If You Can” (2002), “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005), “Mad…
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For Arvo Pärt, Music And Silence Are Divine
In her essay, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” Susan Sontag writes that “the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence.” Though Sontag never mentions the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (of whom she could hardly have been aware at the time),…
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How Did John Steinbeck And An Obama Staffer Get The Bible So Wrong?
Working for Barack Obama can be a career maker, but Hebrew readers have been puzzled by the explanation for the path that one former staffer took. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Michael Slaby, whom the newspaper described as “among the key tech gurus for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns,” has founded a startup called Timshel…
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Books Is There Still A Chance For Peace In The Middle East?
Not long ago, I strolled along the spotless streets of Rawabi, a new Palestinian city being built near Ramallah, with Jack Nassar, the project’s development manager. He is an educated young man, smartly dressed and well compensated. We walked past the impressive amphitheater, strolled through expansive parks, saw the church and the mosque, and viewed…
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