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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This Scion Of Jewish Humor Tried To Stop Trump’s Wall — With Art
If you ask any given member of the self-declared resistance to President Trump what they dislike about his policies, they’ll likely respond along ideological lines, protesting his administration’s attitude to immigrants, Muslims, or the environment – to name just a few of-the-moment issues. Sarah Zapolsky, a researcher and social science analyst who works in the…
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Why Did Son Of Jewish Radicals Write A Play About Muslim Americans?
Zach Galifianakis, a comic who has mastered the art of making things so unfunny as to be hilarious, hosts a notoriously awkward online talk show called “Between Two Ferns.” In it, he seats himself and a guest – past participants have included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Justin Bieber – between two leafy specimens, and…
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110 Years Later, This Tragic Yiddish Scandal Is More Timely Than Ever
The opening moments of “Indecent” are breathtaking. As you enter the Cort Theatre, where this Yiddish-theater drama-within-a-drama opened tonight, the cast is waiting, sitting quietly in an upstage row of chairs, dressed in early-20th-century clothes, valises at their sides. When the play begins, they stand and make their way onto the raised stage in front…
The Latest
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How A Feminist Scholar Revealed Sylvia Plath’s Allegations Of Ted Hughes’s Abuse
The literary world has been recently abuzz over reports that a letter written by poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, which has never been made public, alleges that her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, physically abused her two days before she miscarried their second child. The letter, written to Plath’s American psychiatrist and frequent correspondent Dr….
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62 Years Ago Today, the Jewish World Lost Its Greatest Genius
On April 18, 1955, Albert Einstein passed away. In the following days, the groundbreaking physicist’s death was met with grief on all fronts. Then-President Dwight Eisenhower eulogized the scientist, commenting “No other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of 20th century knowledge.” The New York Times, in an obituary, lauded Einstein’s moral courage,…
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Why It’s So Hard To Be A Kushner In The Age Of Jared And Ivanka
People used to be curious about my first name, but now, everyone wants to know the real deal with my last name. Specifically — am I related to Jared Kushner? The short answer: no. I am also not related to other famous Kushners: Tony, for instance. Or Rabbi Harold. Or France’s famed Bernard Kouchner. Or…
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Music Would Leonard Cohen Find This Gigantic Mural Embarrassing?
Leonard Cohen’s getting a gigantic tribute in Montreal. But at least one prominent local thinks the late cultural icon would have cringed at his 28,000-square-foot, 20-story likeness plastered on a downtown building. Writing for the Montreal Gazette, writer Bill Brownstein called the massive mural an “ill-fitting tribute… that feels so wrong.” “The fact of the…
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How Richard Gere’s ‘Norman’ Became The Unlikeliest Cinema Hero
You already know Norman Oppenheimer. He’s the guy no one can remember inviting to the party, and yet here he is, handing out business cards and offering to put you in touch with one of his many well-heeled connections. Or he’s pressed against the velvet rope on a rainy night, insisting he’s with the band….
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Remembering Jesse Zel Lurie, Witness To A Century Of History
Jesse Zel Lurie, who died in Florida on April 10 at age 103, proved that there was nothing like being on the spot to advance a journalistic career. New York-born in 1913, he made Aliyah in the 1920s and attended high school in Haifa. In 1935, he started writing for The Jerusalem Post, then known…
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Uncovering The Secret Tunnel That Helped Jews Of Vilna Escape The Nazis
“Holocaust Escape Tunnel,” the latest episode in the PBS science series “Nova” follows a group of scholars and engineers as they use the latest ground radar techniques to re-discover an important piece of Jewish history in Vilna. Napoleon called Vilna (now officially Vilnius) the “Jerusalem of the North.” It was home to Elijah ben Solomon…
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These Photos Of Borscht Belt Ruins Changed My Life
I grew up in the “mountains,” or as others called it “the country.” Throughout my entire life, family, friends and neighbors uttered these words as if no other mountains or country existed anywhere else in the wide world. Five years ago when I began working on “The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish…
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