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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Hedy Weiss, Chicago Theater Critic, Under Fire For ‘Egregious’ Review
Hedy Weiss, the Chicago Sun-Times’s longtime theater critic, is under fire from the Chicago theater community for her review of the Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of Antoinette Nwandu’s “Pass Over.” The play, which follows two young black ben through a “Waiting for Godot”-like scenario, has garnered generally positive reviews; The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones deemed it…
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Jessica Cohen, David Grossman’s Translator, To Donate Man Booker Winnings To Israeli Human Rights Group
Jessica Cohen, Israeli novelist David Grossman’s longtime translator, will donate half of her share of the pair’s Man Booker International Prize winnings to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. B’Tselem, which operates in the West Bank, states its primary mission as being “to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government,…
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So, How Do You Observe Shabbat In Reykjavik?
Shabbat lasts three days in Reykjavik, Iceland, as I discovered when I found myself there for a writing conference. Shabbat began at 11:16 p.m. on Friday night, according to Chabad’s ever-helpful online calendar that lists candle-lighting times around the world, and finally ended at 1:27 on Sunday morning. Travelers to Iceland in summer often remark…
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EXCLUSIVE: Meet David Grossman, Israel’s Conscience And Man Booker Prize Winner
‘Almost in every book I write there is an individual facing an outer arbitrariness,” David Grossman told me one cold morning shortly before the weather turned to rain. His point was reinforced by the chaos behind him: It was a Monday, and outside, on New York City’s Lexington Avenue, a series of harried workers rushed…
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David Grossman Wins Man Booker International Prize
Israeli novelist David Grossman and his translator, Jessica Cohen, have won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for “A Horse Walks Into a Bar.” Delighted to announce our #MBI2017 winner is David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into a Bar translated by Jessica Cohen – https://t.co/AZQPkQiKfp pic.twitter.com/z441PP3DiC — Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) June 14, 2017 Both…
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Teju Cole’s New Book Defies Categorization
I’ve started this review three or four times by now, and each time I’ve deemed my writing inadequate and started over again. The book, quite frankly, needs to be seen for itself. Like all great works, it defies paraphrase – it cannot be brought under the dominion of a single interpretation. But it is the reviewer’s…
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‘Indecent’ To Close On Broadway
Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” will close on Broadway on June 25. The play was Vogel’s Broadway debut. Director Rebecca Taichman, who co-created the show with Vogel, won this year’s Tony Award for best direction of a play. “Indecent” isn’t the only play to announce an early closing following the Tony Awards. Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat,” also her…
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Film & TV When ‘All In The Family’ Took On The ‘Alt-Right’
‘All in the Family,” which ran from 1971 to 1979, may soon be rebooted. The show’s creator, 94-year-old Norman Lear, is in talks with Sony Pictures Television to bring back not only this show, but also a few other popular Lear sitcoms. The plan is to take actual scripts from the shows and remake them…
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Did Bob Dylan Plagiarize His Nobel Lecture — From Sparknotes?
You would not be blamed for weeping over the news that Bob Dylan, an already-controversial recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, may have plagiarized part of the Nobel Lecture he gave in acceptance of the prize from Sparknotes. Yes, really: Sparknotes. The news was broken by Slate’s Andrea Pitzer, who took on the…
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Howard Jacobson’s ‘Pussy’ Grabs Trump — By The Book
Pussy By Howard Jacobson Random House 208 pages, $22.95 ‘I keep being told by people that I’m becoming a bit of a ranter,” Howard Jacobson warned me about halfway into our conversation. We were sitting, having tea, in the main room of his London apartment, which is framed at one end by floor-to-ceiling windows, as…
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EXCLUSIVE: An Interview With Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Greg Pardlo
Nobody ever said a Trump presidency would be poetic, and it isn’t. From midnight tweets full of babyish interjections, to a press secretary who sometimes sounds like he’s reading a Ouija board, the English language has in a few short months taken a beating — much harsher, remarkably, than the one George W. Bush gave…
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