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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Mask-Maker Draws Inspiration From Amsterdam’s Red Light District — Naughty And Nice
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — For someone who produces and sells masks for a living, it makes sense to set up shop in the center of this city’s famed Red Light District. After all, there are countless masks and costumes on sale in the many adult toy shops that dot this part of the Dutch capital, which…
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The New Yorker’s New Bot Wants To Bring More Poetry Into Your Life
Early this morning, The New Yorker gave us some good news on an otherwise bleak day (the reissue of the travel ban, the continued “wiretap” insanity) – to celebrate their ninety-second anniversary, the magazine launched The Poetry Bot. The Poetry Bot is, according to The New Yorker, “a new way to receive, read, listen to,…
The Latest
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How One Israeli Grocery Bag Solves A Vexing Dating Dilemma
Ever wish you could tell at a glance if someone was single or not? A Tel Aviv convenience-store has a novel solution to this problem. Tel Aviv is known for its nightlife and its large number of single residents, but Israel itself is a family-centric culture. The divide between solo freedom and traditional home life…
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Does This Movie Herald The Arrival Of A Yiddish Film Renaissance?
Between 1911 and 1950, there were hundreds — the exact number is the matter of some debate — of Yiddish films produced, mostly in Eastern Europe and America. It seems safe to say that over the past few years, there have been more Yiddish-language films than at any time since World War I. I give…
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My Hero Grandmother Who Escaped An Arranged Marriage
I knew my grandmother Fanny Meiselman only as a tiny old woman who smelled faintly floral. I never really questioned why she spoke English so well while I had to make do with Yinglish when I talked with my other grandmother. Grandma Fanny used to chase me with bobby pins to get my unruly thick…
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Maybe I Tried Too Hard To Save A Holocaust Survivor
Mrs. Zelnick’s lips were blue, her eyes glazed over, and her oxygen saturation at 70%. But her nails had been done earlier that week and were a lovely shade of crimson. Her hair, although slightly mussed from the pillows, had not lost its set. Even in her dazed state, she possessed dignity and grace. I…
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Abigail Pogrebin Celebrated Every Jewish Holiday For A Year. Here’s What She Learned.
Judaism has always been a deeply felt part of Abigail Pogrebin’s identity. Still, while Pogrebin grew up attending alternative seders that put a feminist twist on the traditional Haggadah – no surprise, given that her mother, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, co-founded Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem – and enormous Hanukkah parties, she didn’t start to be…
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Why It’s Critical That We Demythologize The Holocaust
Why? Explaining the Holocaust By Peter Hayes W.W. Norton & Company, 412 pages, $27.95 The historian Peter Hayes has always derided what he regards as simplistic explanations of complicated phenomena. In his popular Holocaust lecture course at Northwestern University, he savaged Daniel Goldhagen’s argument, in “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” that a uniquely German “eliminationist anti-Semitism” caused…
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Lebowski Fest 2017, And More To Read, Watch, And Do This Weekend
First up, if you’re a young professional and the arts aren’t quite enough to sustain your social calendar — we can’t imagine why! — take a look through the Forward’s new feature “Jews About Town.” With tips on social events across the country, check it out if you’re looking for new, creative ways to get…
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These Backstage Ringling Brothers Photos Prove The Circus Was Always A Scary Place
At the beginning of the year, the The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that they will be putting on their last performances in May of 2017. Since announcing their upcoming closure, the company has received a spate of “in-memoriam” type coverage from the press – most of it nostalgic, some, not so much…
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For James Merrill On His 91st Birthday
Today, we celebrate James Merill’s birthday. Merrill, one of the pre-eminent American poets of the 20th century, was, per his Poetry Foundation bio, the recipient of “nearly every major literary award in America” and a playwright, novelist, and critic, as well as a poet. Born in 1926 in New York City, Merrill was the son…
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
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