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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How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
For this author, 'The Apprentice' is a chillingly accurate film that hits way too close to home
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Music Did George Gershwin Plagiarize From Broadway’s ‘Shuffle Along?’
“Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921,” the Broadway show starring Audra McDonald, opened on April 28. Its book by George C. Wolfe purports to explain how the African-American songwriter Eubie Blake encountered difficulties along the way to producing a show, “Shuffle Along,” nearly a century ago. One of the key…
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Inspiring Rabbis: For Rabbi Darby Leigh, Growing Up Deaf Taught Jewish Inclusiveness
Rabbi Darby Leigh is one of this year’s “Inspiring Rabbis,” a group of 32 men and women who move us, and moved a congregant or colleague to nominate them for our annual roundup of spiritual leaders. Find the other 31 here. When he was growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago There has been quite a lot of talk recently about the suffering of the Jews in Russia as a result of the current war. There is also, however, a different type of Jew about whom there is much less discussion. This would be the Jewish soldier. What is it like for…
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Is Steven Spielberg the Most Sexist Director in Hollywood?
For Steven Spielberg, who has a tendency to make films concerned with various types of aliens — see: “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” War of the Worlds,” etc., etc. — there is, apparently, one kind of character who is just a bit too foreign to handle: a woman who speaks…
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The Spirit of Sholem Aleichem Thrives in the Work of Boris Sandler
Before World War II, the town of Bălţi (in Yiddish, Belts, not to be confused with Belz in Galicia) in the Romanian, formerly Russian, province of Bessarabia, was not different from thousands of shtetls of Eastern Europe. What was exceptional, though, was that it largely retained its Jewish character during the 1950s and ’60s, when…
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How Did Marvin Hier Become the Rabbi Who Blesses Movies?
“The Rabbi Who Can Bless Your Movie.” That was the headline in “The Hollywood Reporter’s” Oscar issue in March. And if that sounds a bit incongruous, it gets more interesting. The rabbi in question is Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its affiliated Museum of Tolerance. So you may ask,…
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They Hunted Nazis to the Ends of the Earth
The Nazi Hunters By Andrew Nagorski Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $30 There is a Zelig-like quality to Andrew Nagorski’s “The Nazi Hunters.” More often than not, in a saga spanning decades and continents, Nagorski has been there, interviewing the men and women pursuing the worst villains of the Holocaust. Many of the stories he…
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“Gregor” Director Will Steinberger is Kafka Mad
Will Steinberger, part of the founding trio of InVersion Theatre, has close-cropped dark hair, rectangular tortoiseshell glasses, and flighty, energetic hands. He’s an eager young artist whose ideas seem to constantly threaten to stampede inside his mind, talking with an engaging – and sometimes terrifying – rapidity. That mindset makes a InVersion’s current production of…
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It’s OK To Not Like the Golden State Warriors — and the Bible Says So
The Golden State Warriors are having one of the greatest seasons in the history of American sports. They have revolutionized the game of basketball, they have a near-perfect roster which boasts the best shooter in N.B.A. history (Steph Curry), and they have broken the single-season wins record (72) set by Michael Jordan’s ’1995-’96 Chicago Bulls….
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Meet the Women Changing the Face of Orthodox Journalism
Responding to the suggestion that some feminists might endorse Ami’s policy of not publishing photographs of women, editor Rechy Frankfurter says she doesn’t need to gussy up her Hasidic beliefs with politically correct rhetoric. “We are who we are and we’re not apologetic,” Frankfurter said in the magazine’s bustling offices, located in Brooklyn’s Boro Park….
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The Forgotten Gizmo That Brought Us Closer to the Holy Land
Some academics I know have been quick to avail themselves of the latest digital tools so that they might communicate more effectively with their tech-savvy students. Others are more apt to roll their eyes or dig in their heels at the prospect of actively integrating technology into their teaching. Hoping to convince the skeptics among…
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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 This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Fast Forward Meet Lev Kreitman, who brought down Tel Aviv shooter and survived Nova music festival on Oct. 7
In Case You Missed It
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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Fast Forward Nova survivor reveals she witnessed rape on Oct. 7 at Tel Aviv memorial ceremony interrupted by rocket sirens
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Fast Forward In NYC, Jews gather together — and apart — for prayer and protest to mark one year since Oct. 7
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Fast Forward Trump visits gravesite of Lubavitcher Rebbe to mark Oct. 7 anniversary
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