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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How Nobel Prize-Winning Poet Derek Walcott Identified With The Jews
Derek Walcott, the Nobel Prize-winning poet from the West Indies who died March 17 at age 87, was long inspired by Jewish culture, history and friendships. As the literary scholar Bénédicte Ledent has pointed out, Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa” draws a “parallel between blacks and Jews.” The poem, about the Mau Mau…
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In New Broadway Hit Musical, A Rabbi Makes An Unlikely Cameo
On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government closed American airspace to all traffic. Every trans-Atlantic flight less than halfway to its destination was ordered to return to Europe. Those closer to the United States were diverted to Newfoundland . It hardly seems the stuff of musicals, but those next four days are at the center…
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Norman Podhoretz, One Of The Last Great New York Intellectuals, Is Holding His Ground
Norman Podhoretz, 87, has lost more influential friends than most people ever dream of making — among them playwright Lillian Hellman, critic Lionel Trilling, philosopher Hannah Arendt, and novelist Norman Mailer. In John Leland’s new profile of Podhoretz for The New York Times, one thing is clear: For Podhoretz, those feuds are as intellectually vivid…
The Latest
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Chaim Potok’s Daughter On Playing A Muslim Mother: ‘Devotion Is Devotion’
Naama Potok, daughter of the famed novelist Chaim Potok, has been acting for over three decades. Now, as Playbill’s Joe Gambino reported, she’s taken on a role that’s entirely new to her: That of a Muslim mother in Iran. “I fully honor and accept the profound differences that exist between and among people,” Potok told…
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How Milton Glaser Created The Most Iconic Bob Dylan Poster
In a famous line from the movie “Mean Girls,” one character remarks that another’s hair is “so big” because “it’s full of secrets.” Viewing Milton Glaser’s iconic poster of Bob Dylan, in which the musician appears in silhouette, hair a kaleidoscopic swirl, one might wonder at the significance of the coiffeur. Is it billowing with…
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Why Trump’s Cuts Would Be Deadly To Jewish And American Culture
Imagine our communities with libraries and museums closed most weekdays; when children in school do not get to express their creativity through dance, painting or theater; when our summer days are devoid of festivals, concerts and theater in the parks; when the military can no longer depend on arts therapists and therapy programs to help…
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‘Indecent,’ A Yiddishist Love Story, Begins Trek To Broadway — But Where Are The Danishes?
On a Manhattan Monday, in an airy rehearsal studio far enough west of Times Square to make a grumbling city-dweller breathe with freedom, a group of journalists greeted each other forlornly. “There’s no food,” one photographer grumbled to another, affixing various implements to his camera. To his left, a journalist clutching a notepad and elderly…
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How To Deconstruct The Graffiti In Tel Aviv’s Hippest Neighborhood
Florentin, a neighborhood full of artists, hipsters, mom-and-pop businesses, lighting stores and quirky home-décor emporiums, is Tel Aviv’s answer to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg — at least before it gentrified entirely. It’s also a great place to check out graffiti that reveals Israel’s political pulse. Most of the graffiti is in Hebrew, and a lot of it…
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7 Vital Programs That Would Be Gutted By Trump’s Arts and Humanities Cuts
Yesterday, Donald Trump’s administration proposed eliminating four crucial U.S. cultural agencies — the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The effects of these cuts would be devastating both to artists and teachers and the communities they serve….
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Why Have So Many Jews Wanted To Play Shylock?
Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” with Shylock, the vengeful Jewish money-lender, is seen by many as anti-Semitic. Yet Jewish actors and directors have been drawn to the play. “Wrestling with Shylock: Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice,” a collection of essays edited by Edna Nahshon and Michael Shapiro from Cambridge University Press, tries to explain…
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This Exciting Exhibition Will Have You Hearing Sculptures
Susan Sontag, in her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence,” wrote that “As long as a human eye is looking there is always something to see. To look at something that’s “empty” is still to be looking, still to be seeing something — if only the ghosts of one’s own expectations.” We might extend Sontag’s assertion…
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