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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50 Years Later, Israel’s Basketball Hero Tal Brody Remembers His Glory Days
It’s been almost 50 years, but people still stop Tal Brody on the streets of Israel and shake his hand. Or they wave and smile from a distance, all hoping to make contact with a national hero. Brody helped snap the country out of its deep funk following the 1972 Olympic Massacre and the 1973…
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Harold Prince Produced Broadway Musicals — Now He’s the Subject of One
If you love “West Side Story,” “”Cabaret,” or “Sweeney Todd,” you love Harold Prince: the theatrical producer and director collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on each of those beloved shows. That’s not enough to convince you? He also produced the original “Fiddler on the Roof,” directed and co-conceived the 1998 dramatization of Leo Frank’s trial and…
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New Jewish Literary Journal Pays Tribute to Vilna Ghetto Heroes
The first volume of the Jewish Book Council’s new annual literary journal, Paper Brigade, isn’t exactly subtle in its messaging: its cover, designed by Katherine Messenger, features sketches of an attractive set of bookish people utterly lost in Jewish literature. They seem to occupy a bubble of calmness. One woman sits absorbed in Anita Diamant’s…
The Latest
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Meet Rachel Chavkin, Director of Broadway Smash ‘The Comet’
The shining shifting spectacle “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” is playing at the aptly titled Imperial Theater starring Josh Groban and directed by Rachel Chavkin. “The Comet” (as it is colloquially known), by Dave Malloy, is one of the most exciting electro rock operas to hit Broadway in recent years. Based on…
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Why Michael Chabon’s New Novel Made Me Gasp
Michael Chabon’s new novel, “Moonglow,” initially presents itself as a fairly straightforward memoir. And yet complications abound from the get-go, as one might expect from a writer who has done more than most to complicate what genre works can do and be and how they might be critically received. (An author’s note also suggests that…
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‘Mozart in the Jungle,’ An Italian Jewish Celebration, and 5 Other Things to Watch, Read, and Do This Weekend
Hanukkah is coming, which means, for many, some serious winter nesting. Before you huddle up for the holiday, partake in some of the last best moments of Jewish culture in 2016. 1) Binge on theater, new and old This week and next herald the openings of Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg’s new play “The Babylon…
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How Does A Jew Follow Texas’s New Abortion Law?
Last week, Texas approved a new law that will require abortion providers to either bury or cremate and scatter fetal remains. The law, proposed in July at the behest of Governor Greg Abbott, will change the longstanding medical practice of disposing of fetal remains in a sanitary landfill along with other biological waste. The rule,…
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Martin Amis Announces New ‘Autobiographical Novel’ Featuring Saul Bellow & Christopher Hitchens
Author Martin Amis, perhaps best known for his (in)famous Holocaust novel, “Time’s Arrow,” announced in a recent interview with livemint.com that he is working on an autobiographical novel that he has “been trying to write for 15 years.” Despite calling the novel autobiographical, Amis stated that the book will be less about him than about…
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On Cult German Show, Real Rabbi Officiates TV Bar Mitzvah
If you walk through a German-speaking town next Sunday night, the odds are that the streets will literally be empty as people stay at home to watch a bar mitzvah on TV. For Germans and Austrians like me, “Tatort” (“Crime Scene”) is the holy grail of television. It’s the German equivalent of “Game of Thrones,”…
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Rachel Kushner Wrote About Jerusalem Refugee Camp For NYT Mag — Here’s What Happened Behind the Scenes
Last week, novelist Rachel Kushner published an essay called “We Are Orphans Here: Life and death in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian refugee camp,” recounting her time in the Shuafat Refugee Camp, in The New York Times Magazine. The essay details Kushner’s experience in Shuafat with a local Palestinian community organizer named Baha Nababta as her guide….
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Books Is Alexander Portnoy White?
It’s struck me lately that the American writer perhaps most deeply associated with White Male Writer-ness is one who made his name writing fiction about identity. Google “Philip Roth” and “white male” and you find an endless stream of essays that offer up Roth as a prime example of the white male literary novelist. As…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Fast Forward Connie Francis, 20th-century star turned TikTok sensation, recorded an album of Jewish songs in 1960
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