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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Who Owns This Artist’s Legacy — His Family Or Yad Vashem?
In the Płaszów concentration camp, Joseph Bau used paper from cigarettes discarded by Nazis to make a deck of playing cards. But instead of kings, queens and jesters, the young artist illustrated the cards with scenes of normal life before the Nazi invasion: a wedding, a family outing, a doctor’s visit. When fellow prisoners in…
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That Time I Was Mistaken For Son Of Sam
Back in 1977, New York City was gripped by a fear unlike any other I have witnessed, except, of course, during the aftermath of 9/11. It was a reign of terror that saw six people murdered and seven others wounded. Most of those who were attacked were young women. The conventional wisdom was that the…
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Music When Shostakovich Wrote ‘From Jewish Folk Poetry’ And Pissed Off Stalin
The 20th-century Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich might be best known for his conflicted but patriotic symphonies, his daring operas, including two takes on Nikolai Leskov’s novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” or the extent to which, decades after his death on this day in 1975, no one can say authoritatively whether his music was…
The Latest
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The Secret Jewish History of Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook, the Broadway diva who died on August 8 at age 89, is best remembered for starring in the musicals “Plain and Fancy” (1955), “Candide,” (1956) and “The Music Man” (1957). The long years of cabaret singing that followed may have obscured how much Yiddishkeit was involved in the achievement of this doughty performer….
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Meet The 25-Year-Old Israeli Scientist Who Created Women In Translation Month
August is Women in Translation Month, which aims to bring attention to a depressing and little-known literary fact: women writers are translated far less often than male writers. This means many women writers have almost no chance of being heard outside their home country — and in practical terms, remaining untranslated means a diminished chance…
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What Became of Europe’s Nazi-Looted Libraries?
The rhombicuboctahedronal National Library of Belarus sits on the northwest edge of Minsk, elevated above the surrounding landscape like a Brutalist disco ball. Few passersby would suspect that it’s home to some of the finest Jewish libraries of pre-war Paris, housing thousands of rare volumes that once inhabited the elegant studies and drawing rooms of…
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How Does Robert Pinsky Pen A Protest Poem?
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s poem “Exile and Lightning” made an impact when he read it at a PEN America Writers Resist event in January. In front of a crowd that included cultural figures like Masha Gessen, Art Spiegelman, and Amy Goodman, Pinsky issued a striking reflection on the contemporary urgency of historic thought. “Now,…
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Art Times Review of Mossad-Organized Eichmann Exhibit Sparks Right-Wing Backlash
Art critics are used to having the last word on things, so New York Times writer Jason Farago must have been surprised when his review of “Operation Finale,” an exhibition on the capture and trial of SS leader Adolf Eichmann at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, earned him the severe ire of the Algemeiner’s…
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Can You Sing A Novel To The Tune Of ‘Fiddler On The Roof’?
After Anatevka: A Novel Inspired by “Fiddler on the Roof” By Alexandra Silber Pegasus Books, 336 pages, $25.95 “Fiddler on the Roof” ends with the dairyman Tevye and most of his family evicted from their shtetl of Anatevka and heading to new lives in America. In their musical adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s Yiddish-language tales, Joseph…
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Books German Project Reunites Books Stolen During Holocaust With Rightful Heirs
BERLIN (JTA) — A new search in Germany for books stolen from Jews during the Third Reich is beginning to bear fruit. Recently, a man in California who was the only survivor of the Holocaust in his family received a book from Germany that had been dedicated to him by a teacher. The only other…
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Dating As A Single, Orthodox Filmmaker Isn’t Easy
People often ask if I’m running out of story ideas for my web series “Soon By You”, which centers on Orthodox Jews dating in New York. I laugh. And then I cry. I have stories for days. It’s an interesting experiment, dating your target demographic. As much as I take bits and pieces from my…
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Looking Forward My artist grandmother nearly made aliyah. I don’t know what she’d think of Israel today
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.