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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Music
The Secret Jewish History Of Procol Harum
Fifty years ago this spring, a then unknown British rock group called Procol Harum released its very first single, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale.” The distinctive recording went to No. 1 in the United Kingdom and hit the top 10 in the United States, casting the mold somewhat for “progressive rock” on its way to…
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How The JCC Manhattan Inspired This Tribeca Film Festival Winner
What does it take to win two of the Tribeca Film Festival’s most prestigious prizes? Apparently, aside from talent, willpower and funding, a dose of inspiration from the JCC Manhattan will do the trick. Director and writer Rachel Israel’s film “Keep the Change” took home the Festival’s juried awards for Best U.S. Narrative Feature and…
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Are These Jewish Writers America’s Best Young Novelists?
A look at Granta magazine's list
The Latest
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What Jews Can Learn From ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
When Margaret Atwood published “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 1984, the dystopian genre in literature was about to change. The books that had defined it, including Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984,” had been preoccupied with the threat of socialist totalitarianism. Atwood wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” in West Berlin, in the shadow of…
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In ‘Natasha,’ David Bezmozgis Captures Russian Jews Caught Between Two Worlds
Writer-director David Bezmozgis is cautiously optimistic about the fate of his flick, “Natasha,” adapted from the title story in his critically acclaimed collection (“Natasha and other stories,” 2004) and marking his second outing as a filmmaker. “Natasha” is the first film to explore the little known Russian-born Jewish subculture in Toronto that was spawned from…
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Palermo To Open First Synagogue Since Expulsion Of The Jews
While the Iberian Peninsula continues to experience a reckoning with, and resurgence of, its Jewish past, a quieter, but similar, reckoning is taking place on the island of Sicily, specifically, in the capital city of Palermo. A New York Times piece published earlier this week tells the story of the Jewish population of Palermo, which…
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Jacques Derrida & Ornette Coleman – A Match Made In Heaven
Today in the world of glorious web discoveries, I saw on the OpenCulture twitter account a link to an interview between jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman and deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida. At first glance, it’s a seemingly random, bizarre, pairing, but something about it, on a gut level, just makes sense. And throughout their short conversation,…
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Paula Vogel’s ‘Indecent’ Leads Outer Critics Circle Nominations
Sholem Asch would be proud. Today, when the Outer Critics Circle announced the nominees for its 2017 awards, Paula Vogel’s and Rebecca Taichman’s “Indecent,” an homage to Asch’s “God of Vengeance,” racked up six nominations, making it the most-nominated play for this year’s awards. While “Indecent” was the most-nominated play, the production to gain the…
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Woman And Girl From Astonishing Holocaust Photograph Identified
In the photograph, the woman’s face is torn between joy and despair. Clutching the hand of her young daughter, she’s one of 2,500 Jewish prisoners who have just been liberated from a Nazi train moving them from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt. On the hill behind her the rest of the prisoners spill out from the train,…
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Painting Stolen By The Nazis To Go Up For Auction In Austria
According to a Guardian report, a painting stolen by the Nazis is set to be auctioned by the Im Kinsky auction house in Vienna next week. Van der Helst’s “Portrait of a Man,” a 17th century Dutch Master work, was stolen from the collection of Adolphe Schloss in 1943, a Jewish-German businessman who lived in…
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Why Chernobyl’s Jewish History Still Matters — 31 Years After The Accident
My aunt recently reminded me that everything changed on April 26, 1986. I knew this, of course, but it wasn’t often that my family talked about the accident or the evacuation. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my grandfather Mikhail spoke proudly of his work at a nuclear power plant, as well as of…
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