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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Art
The Jewish Community Still Discriminates Against Bastards. These Artists Are Demanding Change.
Inside a small room in Jerusalem, four artists are taking on one of the most deep-rooted taboos in Judaism: That of the mamzer, the illegitimate child. A mamzer is someone born as the result of a sexual relationship forbidden in the Torah. Translated in English as “misbegotten” (according to the JPS Tanakh, but also commonly…
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Every Word Nerd Is Looking Up ‘Indictment’ — But Why Is It Spelled That Way?
For word nerds, checking up on what’s hot in dictionary look-ups can be an addictive form of procrastination. As of noon today, these were the top five on Merriam-Webster, along with their super-quick definitions: conspiracy: An agreement to commit an illegal act collusion, indictment: Two Latin-based legal terms dossier: a file containing detailed records debase:…
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Was Bob Dylan At His Best When He Was Christian?
I recently attended an alumni reunion at the Berkshires summer camp where I worked in the kitchen in the 1970s. More than one person came up to me at the reunion and said, “I’ll never forget how upset you were when Bob Dylan became a born-again Christian.” When early in the summer of 1979 it…
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Exactly How Did Hitler Become Hitler Anyway?
Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi By Tom Weber Basic Books, 464 pages, $35 Today, historians are in the unfortunate position of having to describe new books on the Nazi era as “timely.” This description is especially apt for Tom Weber’s new book, “Becoming Hitler.” Had it appeared prior to Donald Trump’s election in…
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30 Years Before Trump, Tarkovsky Foresaw The Apocalypse
By the time that Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky created his nuclear war parable, “The Sacrifice” (1986), currently playing at the Quad in a new 4K restoration, he had been exiled from one of the Cold War’s superpowers and had been thoroughly nonplussed by the other. Filmed in Sweden, in geographic and spiritual retreat from Moscow…
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Film & TV In A Predominantly Christian Country, Why Is Jewish Humor So Popular?
Jewish Comedy: A Serious History By Jeremy Dauber W. W. Norton & Company, 416 pages, $28.95 Jews are hilarious. We know this, or at least think we do. Just look at all the Jewish cut-ups out there. At the moment, Judd Apatow, Jenji Kohan, Amy Schumer and Sarah Silverman are some of the top performers…
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Art German Far-Right Party Attacks Documenta Over Financial Issues
Documenta, Germany’s leading contemporary art festival, which takes place every five years in the city of Kassel, has been sued by far right members of the city’s council. According to a report by Henri Neuendorf in artnet, the councilmembers, who belong to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, are accusing the festival’s leadership of misappropriating…
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Art JCC Manhattan To Receive $20 Million Gift and Jenny Holzer Artwork
According to a report in the New York Times, JCC Manhattan has announced that it has received a gift of $20 million from the Meyerson Family Foundation, which also commissioned a site-specific artwork for the center. In honored of the donation, JCC Manhattan will be renamed the Marlene Meyerson JCC, starting in February 2018. The…
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Salinger’s Heirs, Biographers Tussle Over Unpublished Writings That May Not Exist
J.D. Salinger retired in 1965 and died in 2010. What happened in between has become the subject of a restrained controversy, chronicled today by Matthew Haag in The New York Times. Although no new Salinger works have appeared since 1965, and no one close to the writer has said that any will, his admirers still…
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Film & TV How Hedy Lamarr, ‘The Most Beautiful Woman In The World,’ Helped Invent Wi-Fi
When she was a child, Hedy Lamarr’s mother would refer to her as a chameleon. Living up to the moniker, she would go on to lead a surpassingly dramatic life as a Viennese socialite, Hollywood actress, and influential inventor. Her trials and transformations are the subject of Alexandra Dean’s new film, “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr…
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The Russian Jew Who Made Fats Domino A Star
New Orleans singer-pianist Fats Domino, one of the seminal influences on rock ‘n’ roll, died Tuesday in his hometown of New Orleans at age 89. When Domino signed a recording deal with Lew Chudd, owner of Imperial Records, pop history was in the making. The artist recorded a slew of hit singles in the 1950s,…
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens
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Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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News New Jewish-Arab political party debuts in Israel, aiming to topple Netanyahu
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Fast Forward Jewish groups push back against Trump’s Iran deal — but more quietly so far than in 2015
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News Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
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Culture My father was my hero and, when he was dying, I wrote this song for him