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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The ‘Harry Potter’ Series Is 20 — But Is It Jewish?
Twenty years ago, the very first published pages of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series hit bookstores in the United Kingdom. The ensuing decades have seen the books give rise to a worldwide fandom, a successful film series, a thriving fanfiction community, and several theme parks — as well as the eternal question: Is Harry Potter…
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Film & TV A Tolkien Takes On The Holocaust
Yet another Tolkien production’s opening this summer. But this one takes place in our world, not Middle Earth. And its creator isn’t Lord of the Rings wizard JRR Tolkien, but his 27-year-old great-grandson Nicholas. “Terezin,” Nicholas Tolkien’s first play, debuted June 20 in New York; it’s a harrowing descent into the hell of Terezin, which…
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Film & TV Why A Jewish Filmmaker Took On A Muslim Girl’s Story For PBS
At the very end of “Dalya’s Other Country,” a young woman named Dalya — the documentary’s namesake — attends the January protests at Los Angeles International Airport against the president’s first travel ban. Accompanied by her two brothers and wearing a hijab, she carries a piece of poster board on which she has written in…
The Latest
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Art To Diane Arbus, Every Portrait Was A Self Portrait
AT first glance, Diane Arbus’s parks look like our parks — and yet they stand apart from them. What might a Martian learn about us from this, people sometimes ask of a text. Arbus’s photos would tell a Martian little: They rather look as though they may have been made by one. ‘In the Park,”…
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Amid New York’s Abundance, Embracing A Life Of Diminished Expectations
The weather is warm the day we arrive. As a child, I would never have been in the city on this day. Like other privileged city children I would have been evacuated to the country, away from the polluted air, the city pools and the open fire hydrants. Or I would have been sent away…
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Musical Sparks Fresh Tensions With Blacks Over Infamous Leo Frank Case
The Leo Frank case, a century old now, seems like an unlikely subject for a musical. Nonetheless, in “Parade” Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Alfred Uhry and composer Jason Robert Brown took on the story of the northern Jew who was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, one of the young employees of the Atlanta pencil factory…
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‘Indecent’ Won’t Close On Broadway After All — At Least, Not Yet
“Indecent,” Paula Vogel’s tribute to Sholem Asch’s “God of Vengeance,” will stay open on Broadway somewhat longer than expected. Battling low ticket sales, after winning two Tony Awards on June 11 the play’s production team announced that its last performance at the Cort Theater would be June 25. Yet ticket sales took a significant turn…
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Film & TV ‘Jerry Springer — The Opera’ Headed To Off-Broadway
If you’ve ever watched “Jerry Springer” and thought the talk show, infamous for presenting familial confrontations over lurid secrets, expressed some ineffable (if grim) truths about humanity, you’re in luck: “Jerry Springer — The Opera” will arrive in New York in the 2017-2018 season. The stage production, which premiered in London over a decade ago,…
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Revisiting Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels In America’ In The Trump Era
‘Angels in America” is a play of its time and for ours, too. Tony Kushner’s magnum opus — currently in revival at London’s National Theater, and due in movie theaters here this July — is appropriately apocalyptic, informed by an impression of impending catastrophe. “History is about to crack wide open,” Ethel Rosenberg warns Roy…
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Books Yankel and Leah (Chapter 2): Awkward First Date
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To read the previous chapter. And so after some perfunctory small talk, an appointment was arranged. Yankel would meet with someone called Leah Spielman (he scribbled this into his small appointment book), daughter of Abe and Helen Spielman, refugees from the Old World, now living in Flatbush. “Appointment”…
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In 1906, The Forward’s Geyser Became An Unlikely Water Source
“Thousands Come Drink Cold Fresh Water From The ‘Forverts’ Foundation-Stone,” the Forward’s headline read. And New York’s newspapers were filled with the story of the remarkable source uncovered while digging the foundation for the new 10 floor building that was being raised by the ‘Forverts. The English language press was full of descriptions and images…
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