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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Film & TV 50 Shades of Joel Grey
Joel Grey understands why it comes up in every interview. “People want to grab attention and that’s what this year’s news was,” he says. The “it” has to do with his coming out to People Magazine last year. And the reason it remains this year’s news is because of Grey’s just-published, no-holds-barred memoir, “Master of…
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The Talmud of a Cracked IPhone Screen
It happened in dribs and drabs over the course of an entire summer, right down the street from my house. First the brick facade was repainted from a garish neon salmon to a depressing stucco beige. Then the faded awning was replaced. The out-of-date posters for local high school plays, blood drives and block parties…
The Latest
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How a Rabbi’s Granddaughter Became the Host of Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman went viral the day before I interviewed her. It happened after she visited the CNN show “Reliable Sources” to talk about the media’s role in Donald Trump’s ascent. During her conversation with the show’s host, Brian Stelter, Goodman, the longtime co-anchor of the daily news broadcast “Democracy Now!” pointed out how, on a…
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Music 100 Years Ago, Violin God Yehudi Menuhin Was Born
April 22 marks the centenary of violinist Yehudi Menuhin (born Yehudi Mnuchin in New York). After 12-year-old Yehudi Menuhin played three concertos in Berlin, Albert Einstein famously exclaimed: “Now I know there is a God.” Menuhin later demurred that Einstein, as an “exalted Romantic man,” might have said the same thing about a worm or…
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The Secret Jewish History of Don Quixote and Miguel de Cervantes
April 22 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish novelist and playwright Miguel de Cervantes, who was likely born into a family of conversos, Spanish Jews forced in 1492 to convert to Christianity or leave their homeland. Jewish themes have been discerned by some readers in Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.” In time to…
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What We Write About When We Write About Barbra Streisand
So why write about Barbra Streisand? When I was approached to write a volume in a series of book-length biographical essays on Jewish lives, being published by Yale University Press, I was given the liberty to choose whomever I wanted. I took that responsibility seriously. Going in, frankly, I wasn’t a huge fan of Streisand’s…
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Will Isaac Newton Survive the Second Coming of Levi-mania?
It wasn’t just that the novel’s prologue seems to feature Sir Isaac Newton in a romantic liaison with a young Italian man that caught my attention. Since his last published novel, Jonathan Levi has co-founded a high school in New York City, rearranged the elementary school libraries of New York City, written a major piece…
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How Great Adventure Goes All-In Orthodox for Passover
(JTA) — Pinchas Cohen spent most of Monday wandering around Six Flags Great Adventure under a blazing sun, wearing a knee-length black coat and carrying a big box of shmura matzah under his arm. An imposing, Russian-born Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid who now lives in Brooklyn, Cohen came to this amusement park in New Jersey with his…
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Who Should Replace James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera?
The Metropolitan Opera press release dated April 14 stating that long-time music director James Levine is retiring at age 72 due to health issues — without even a perfunctory quote from the departing maestro himself — has left all opera fans agog at the possibilities of who may be hired for the job. No one…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History of ‘Game of Thrones’
“Game of Thrones,” the popular medieval fantasy series that one of its creators describes as “‘The Sopranos’ in Middle-earth” — a reference to that other medieval fantasy saga written by a guy with too many R’s in his name, JRR Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” — is full of intrigue and drama, as well as…
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My Lower East Side Neighbor Caught Adolf Eichmann
For a long time, when I was growing up in the building I still live in on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I knew one neighbor only as Peter. Tall, bronzed and muscled, Peter lived on the 13th floor. If I was riding the elevator alone with him, he always said, “Hello, how’s your mother?” in…
Most Popular
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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 Why Jews see pomegranates as symbols of both love and war
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Fast Forward College campuses mark Oct. 7 anniversary with rallies and protests — but largely not confrontation
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Fast Forward World leaders mourn Israeli victims and call for a ceasefire on anniversary of Oct. 7 attack
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Fast Forward Was a viral Ta-Nehisi Coates interview a hit piece or fair play? A journalism ethics expert weighs in.
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