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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Israeli Star Of James Bond Spoofs Dies At 74
In 1967, Daliah Lavi did what a number of women have likely dreamed of doing since: She poisoned Woody Allen. Well, not quite. Starring opposite him in the 1967 James Bond spoof “Casino Royale,” she tricked him into swallowing an atomic pill that turned him into a human nuclear bomb — the science on this…
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Why These Cutesy Putin Articles Must Stop
Footage of Vladimir Putin playing the piano prior to his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping has recently been making its way across the internet. He sits down, haltingly taps out a couple sentimental Russian tunes, smirks at the camera, and then we’re off. An article in the Huffington Post reads, “The Russian leader isn’t…
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What Do The Talmud And Torah Really Say About Trump’s Lies?
We are living in an age when world leaders regularly deny historical facts — and therefore, defining what the word “lie” means is an urgent concern. It’s also an ancient concern. Both the Torah and the Talmud seem a bit clairvoyant these days in their interest in delineating what a lie is, when it’s okay…
The Latest
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Why Did Lillian Hellman Get Sick Of ‘The Little Foxes’?
‘I like ‘Little Foxes,’ but I’m tired of it,” the playwright Lillian Hellman told The Paris Review in 1965. She might think differently were she to see the current Broadway revival of her best-known play, starring Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon. Why might that production catch Hellman’s eye? Those actors alternate with each other in…
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Why The Forward Is Launching Digital Subscriptions
Dear Friend of the Forward: If you’re here, you care about independent Jewish journalism. That’s why we want to share some important news. To continue providing the award-winning coverage you love, Forward.com is becoming a subscription site. Visitors will pay for content after viewing 10 stories. Keeping your connection to the Forward is easy. For…
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These Are The Best Terry Gross Interviews In The Last 30 Years
No one conducts an interview quite like Terry Gross. The host of NPR’s “Fresh Air” has a knack for getting people to open up and entertain in utterly, well, fresh ways. This week, “Fresh Air” celebrates 30 years on air. In order to join in, we chose eight of Gross’s best interviews with Jewish notables,…
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Etgar Keret Receives The Charles Bronfman Prize
Everything was wrong. And then everything was right again at the presentation of the Charles Bronfman Prize to Etgar Keret on May 11. As Ira Glass pointed out, with all the testimonies it felt like a Memorial Service. Except that the dead guy was alive and on stage. (Seeing Ira Glass in the same room…
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At 96, Judith Leiber Is Still The Queen Of All Handbags
Fashionable evening bags are one thing. But Judith Leiber’s handbags marry exquisitely detailed craftsmanship with a joyously bold, at moments, anarchistic, vision. Close to 100 bejeweled silver and gold-plated high-end “after five” handbags — including Leiber’s iconic evening purses (minaudieres) sculpted to evoke various vegetables and small animals — are on display in the stunning…
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‘I Love Dick,’ And More To Read, Watch, And Do This Weekend
Jill Soloway’s show “Transparent” has been an audience and critic favorite; on Friday, the Jewish director’s new series, “I Love Dick,” will premiere on Amazon Prime. The show stars Kathryn Hahn, who also plays Rabbi Raquel Fein on “Transparent.” Hahn spoke to JTA about the challenges and opportunities of being a non-Jew playing a rabbi…
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When Oprah Met Rosie O’Donnell At ‘Indecent’
The current buzz about Rosie O’Donnell’s Twitter feed (yes, really) is mostly centered on the fact that President Trump revived one of her old tweets to throw some unabashedly petty shade at James Comey, the FBI Director he abruptly — and with confused reasoning — fired on Tuesday. We finally agree on something Rosie. https://t.co/BSP5F3PgbZ…
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Irving Berlin Is 129 Today — This Is His Most American Song
I’ve always been dubious of the idea of “American Culture.” America, being, since its inception, a land of immigrants constantly in demographic and ethnic flux. And this is a good thing, indeed, the idea of a country founded upon legal and philosophical principles, as opposed to ethnic or linguistic concerns, is the fundamental promise of…
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