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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Why Yevgeny Yevtushenko Made Jews Wary
In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who died on April 1 at age 84, published the poem “Babi Yar” in Russia’s “Literary Newspaper” (Literaturnaya Gazeta). The poem objected to Soviet refusal to recognize that Jews were the principal target at Babi Yar in present-day Kiev, Ukraine, where thousands of Jewish men, women and children were murdered by…
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How The Fearless Adventurer Ruth Gruber Joined My Writing Group
My friend Ruth Gruber, who recently died late last year at age 105, was born before women could vote and lived long enough to cast her lot with Hillary. Reading her extraordinary obituary, I thought: she never got to see an American female president. Yet she did get the last word. We met in 1987,…
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My Father The Rabbi, My Father The Mystic
Whenever someone greets me, it’s inevitably, “Hi Lynn, how’s your father?” My incredibly interesting and unusual father departed from life as we know it a few months ago. It is still extremely difficult to put that z”l after his name, and even more difficult to have to relate the news to each one of these…
The Latest
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100 Years Ago, Immigration Policy Was Just As Crucial — And Controversial
Two contrasting images in “1917: How One Year Changed The World,” at Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History, demonstrate the volatility of American attitudes toward immigrants.A World War I poster cautioning against food waste is also a hopeful narrative of arrival and assimilation. A cluster of immigrants gaze from a ship toward the Statue…
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Did One Of Spain’s Greatest Artists Actually Have A Feminist Streak?
Israel’s official relationship with Spain is only 30 years old, and is being celebrated with a remarkable exhibit of prints and paintings by the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828), now on view at The Israel Museum, in Jerusalem. Unofficially, of course, Spain occupies a unique space in the history and memory of the Jewish…
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This Israeli Conductor Wants To Use Music To Fix The World
David Ben Gurion once stated that “it is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneer vigor of Israel shall be tested,” but he probably wasn’t thinking about opera. Omer Meir Wellber, born in 1981 in Be’er Sheva, the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel, has carved out an international career as…
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Bob Dylan Archive Now Open For Research
In 2016, the University of Tulsa and George Kaiser Family Foundation purchased a sizeable collection of Bob Dylan’s personal papers, recordings, artwork, memorabilia and more. The collection, which includes over 6,000 items, is now open to select researchers. The Bob Dylan Archive, which is housed at The University of Tulsa’s Helmerich Center for American Research,…
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Revisiting The Six-Day War, And More To Read, Watch, And Do This Weekend
If you’re not spending the weekend clearing your house of chametz in preparation for Passover, have we got ideas for you! In New York City, spend your Sunday at the 92nd Street Y’s symposium on the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The day’s last session, a discussion of the war’s long-term impact on the…
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HBO To Broadcast Series Based On Elena Ferrante’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’
As the Forward reported earlier this month, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, a quartet beginning with “My Brilliant Friend,” are heading to television in a 32-part series. Now, HBO and the Italian state broadcaster Rai have announced that they’ll be shepherding the series to the screen. As previously announced, it will be directed by Saverio Costanzo,…
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Read Stefan Zweig’s Heartbreaking Letter On The Outbreak of World War I
The Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig has been having a bit of a moment – he’s recently been the subject of a critically acclaimed film (“Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe”) and his experience as a refugee during World War Two has proven especially poignant in our time. Born in Vienna in 1881, Zweig, along with fellow writer…
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Books 5 New Books Make Great Pesach Presents
Mazel tov! You lucked out this year because someone else is hosting the Passover Seders. You may not have much to cook, but you definitely have to bring a gift. Do it because it’s the right thing to do. Do it because your bubbe taught you manners. At the very least, do it because you…
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