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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Film & TV 8 young Jewish comedians on what ‘SNL 50’ means to them
'Saturday Night Live' may be entering middle age, but these rising Jewish comics are just getting started.
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The Versailles of Asbury Park
On the mantelpiece of the Jersey Shore summer home of my dear longtime friends, Phyllis and Stanley Getzler, sits a small stone sculpture, its rough surface punctuated by streaks of black, white and a mustardy shade of yellow. When I first laid eyes on it, I assumed it was a contemporary artwork, one of many…
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Arthur Hiller Directed ‘Love Story’ and ‘The In-Laws’ and Never Lost His Yiddishkeit
Best remembered for his hit film “Love Story,” (1970), the Canadian Jewish director Arthur Hiller’s highest achievement may have been remaining a mensch during the vertiginous ups and downs of a long Hollywood career. Hiller, who died on August 17 at age 92, attributed his trademark gentle calm to his parents, Rose Garfin and Harry…
The Latest
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NYC Fringe Play Tells Stories of Biblical Women — But Where Are the Jews?
“The Bible Women’s Project,” playing in Manhattan through August 24th as part of NYC Fringe, is a brave piece of theater. Coming from Eastern Nazarene College, a non-denominational Christian liberal arts college outside of Boston, the production grew out of a simple but daunting task: have a group of women read all the stories of…
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My Life Among The Trolls
In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a pretty vicious country these days, and by that, I don’t mean the obvious instances of intolerance-cum-violence against African Americans or Muslims or the LGBT community. I mean the everyday little nettles and barbs with which nearly all of us are inundated. Meanness in America is a…
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Remembering Fyvush Finkel — a Character Actor of Uncommon Character
The Forward played an integral role in the start of the long and glorious performing career of the multitalented Fyvush Finkel, who died on August 14 at age 93. He was born Philip Finkel in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to a mother from Minsk and a father from Warsaw. Around 1931, when Philip was…
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In Israel, Internet Comments are Really Vicious — and Powerful
In the United States, “don’t read the comments” is such a common refrain that it’s become shorthand for a generation’s anxiety over abusive internet behavior. In Israel, the comments sections below news article are no less abusive, but people do read them, which is why they play a prominent role in Israeli public discourse. Israelis…
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Why We Must Transform Ourselves in the Month of Av
Some months ago, during an interview with a reporter, I remarked matter-of-factly, regarding my marriage of nearly 15 years, “ “I was a shitty husband.” The reporter looked alarmed, as if I’d confessed to hiding corpses in my basement. “Why do you say that?” she asked. I hadn’t meant to be so self-denigrating; I meant…
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America’s Cosmetic Titans Go Head-To-Head In ‘War Paint’
For decades, the two great 20th-century titans of cosmetics, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, feuded, competing for beauty hegemony and celebrity, expressing mutual disdain, and purloining each other’s ideas and employees. At one point, Rubinstein even hired Arden’s ex-husband Tommy Lewis, both a charming philanderer and a gifted salesman. But what if, for all their…
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Kafka’s Papers Emerge From The Trial
(JTA) — Papers belonging to writer Franz Kafka will be transferred to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled. The papers are part of the estate of writer Max Brod, a friend and biographer of Kafka. Brod brought the papers with him to Palestine in 1939 when he fled Prague to…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago Socialists Need Not Apply Socialists are treyf for the New York City Board of Education, but bribes are apparently kosher. We know this because a local schoolteacher named Gabriel Simon, a well-known socialist active on the Lower East Side, recently took the exam to become a principal and scored the highest…
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Harvey Singer Caught His Prostate Cancer Early. Here’s How.
When the Forward first wrote about Harvey Singer two years ago, he shared his trials of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008. The Rochester, New York, resident opted for a full mastectomy, only to be diagnosed with prostate cancer 18 months later. Recently, we learned that Singer faced yet another monumental health scare after…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Culture He founded the Harlem Globetrotters and is the shortest man in the basketball hall of fame. A new book tells his story.
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Oct. 7: One Year Later One year after Oct. 7, a Yom Kippur ritual of communal mourning takes on fresh meaning
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