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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Have They Finally Found ‘Bugsy’ Siegel’s Killer?
We all know that famous scene in “The Godfather,” the one where the camera cuts back and forth between Michael Corleone attending a baptism and the slaughter of the Corleone family’s enemies. One of the most iconic shots (no pun intended) during the sequence is the scene in which Moe Greene, the Jewish gangster in…
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Berlinale Premieres Its First Yiddish Film and Revisits an Israeli Classic
A meditative documentary about Samuel Bickels, a polyglot costume drama about Karl Marx and a star-studded André Aciman adaptation are among the films to watch for at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, which kicked off on Thursday with the warmly received “Django,” a biopic about the legendary Gypsy Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. When the…
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Why the Muslim Ban Sent Jewish Writers Flocking to Social Media
On Friday, January 27, one week after he was sworn in as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.” That order — as you’ve now surely heard — did at least two notable things. First, it suspended the “Issuance of Visas and Other…
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On Mardi Gras, Are Jews Still Outsiders in New Orleans?
The Rex parade entered the city at the port, the procession stepping from a lavishly decorated boat that drifted down the Mississippi and docked at the foot of Canal Street. It was afternoon on Mardi Gras Day, 1872. Historian Ned Sublette describes the scene in his history of the city, “The Year Before the Flood:…
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How My Illegal Abortion Affirms My Belief in the Right To Choose
I was 18 and in love. The diaphragm a Planned Parenthood clinic had taught me to use had failed. Or I had failed, in my clumsiness, to insert it properly. I was pregnant. I was in California finishing up my degree at UC Berkeley, trying to concentrate on papers and exams, but I also knew…
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How The Crumbs Have Kept Their 46-Year Love Affair Alive
‘He’s the straight man, I’m the pratfall,”Aline Kominsky-Crumb said by way of explaining the dynamics of the collaborative comics she has been making with her husband, Robert Crumb, for well over 40 years. Oh, but that much was clear from the start of my time with Kominsky-Crumb. Having ostensibly been told that I was to…
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The Tragic Story Of Anne Frank’s Brilliant Cousin
Had she known her cousin, Anne Frank might have rephrased a famous statement to read: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really chic at heart.” The French Jewish interior designer Jean-Michel Frank, despite a life of almost unrelieved tragedy — he committed suicide in 1941 at the age of 46 —…
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Where Are All The Tu B’Shvat Songs?
Many Jewish holidays have inspired the people of the book to drop tomes and pick up instruments. And, in the age of YouTube, there’s plenty of evidence for the success of that substitution. And, since Tu B’Shvat — a kind of Jewish Arbor Day — celebrates the rebirth of the natural world, it should be…
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‘Girls’ Enters Its Final Season, And More To Read, Watch, And Do This Weekend
It’s almost the weekend, and whether you’re in still-snowy New York or surprisingly rainy Los Angeles, the weather is no excuse to miss out on great cultural events — unless you’re binge-watching past seasons of HBO’s “Girls” in advance of the premiere of its final season, in which case, more power to you. That premiere…
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Covering Simon And Garfunkel Brought This Heavy Metal Star Back To His Jewish Roots
(JTA) — Before David Draiman became famous as the singer of the heavy metal band Disturbed, he trained to be a cantor. That didn’t go so well. Growing up in Chicago, he was expelled from three different yeshivas, and after a rowdy night of Purim drinking as a teenager, he blew up his high school rabbi’s…
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Meet The Philosopher Who’s A Favorite Of Steve Bannon And Mussolini
Steve Bannon is a confusing man. On the one hand, he sells outrageously conservative films; on the other, he made a ton of money off of Seinfeld. On the one hand, he critiques capitalism with an almost Marxist fervor; on the other, he’s an advisor to a crony capitalist real estate mogul. One place where…
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