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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Fascinating Archaeological Matter Reminds Us That Archaeology Used To Matter More
A few weeks ago, the archaeological community was all abuzz at the news of an exceedingly ancient find from the Holy Land: a scrap of papyrus dating back to the seventh century BCE that referred both to a woman and to Jerusalem. Doubts about its authenticity thickened the air — the rarified air, that is,…
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Woody Allen, Mad Magazine and the Vigoda Brothers Inspire Drew Friedman
Drew Friedman is obsessed with characters at the margins of memory. In his “Old Jewish Comedians” books, his unsparing pen captured faded figures like Benny Rubin and Menashe Skulnik next to stars like Woody Allen and Jerry Lewis. In 2014’s “Heroes of the Comics,” he presented detailed portraits of early comics creators. Now, in “More…
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Wonder Boy Michael Chabon Grows Up in ‘Moonglow’
Late in his new novel, “Moonglow,” Michael Chabon describes the surreal, hastily-constructed lunar landscape of a play produced at a mental hospital. The set is clearly absurd – it’s mostly tinfoil – but it still exudes some sourceless magic. “And yet the foil shone in the subaqueous light,” Chabon writes. “The coat racks raising their…
The Latest
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Move Over, Rodin: 4,000 Year Old “Thinker” Discovered In Israel
Auguste Rodin’s “Thinker,” a ubiquitous image in high-art circles and meme-generating communities alike, has new competition: Haaretz reports an archaeological dig in Yehud has uncovered a Bronze Age ceramic jug featuring a “Thinker”-like figure. (Make that old competition.) Quoted by Haaretz’s Nir Hasson and Ruth Schuster, Gilad Itach, directing the excavation for the Israel Antiquities…
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Mezuzah from a Million Meals
Alexander Rapaport, Executive Director of the Masbia Soup Kitchen, has had a busy year. His soup kitchen, with sites in Flatbush, Coney Island, and Rego Park (Queens), recently overcame months of delays to open a new site in Boro Park. According to their website, they have also “had an almost 350% increase in meal distribution…
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Anne Frank Poem Auctioned For $148,000
In March of 1942, just four months before her family went into hiding from the Nazis, Anne Frank sent a friend an 8-line poem. That handwritten note, recently put up for auction in the Netherlands, just sold for €140,000, the equivalent of $148,000, the BBC reports. Frank sent the poem to the late Christiane van…
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The Secret Jewish History of Robbie Robertson and The Band
Of the many revealing moments in Robbie Robertson’s terrific new memoir, “Testimony” (Crown Archetype), one stands out for what it says about the legacy of the esteemed, influential rock group, the Band, for which Robertson served as chief songwriter and guitarist; what it says about Robertson’s relationship with his fellow Band-mate, Levon Helm, with whom…
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So, Why Were The Rothschilds So Generous?
The Rothschilds: a Dynasty of Art Patrons in France Edited by Pauline Prevost-Marcilhacy Published by Somogy Éditions d’Art, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Musée du Louvre Éditions. To paraphrase the old Yiddish joke, “If I were Rothschild, I’d be richer than Rothschild; I’d donate some art on the side.” This new three-volume study explains more…
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Remembering Sharon Jones With ‘8 Days (Of Hanukkah)’
Soul singer Sharon Jones, whose work with the band the Dap-Kings earned her a Grammy nomination in 2014, passed away on Friday. She had battled pancreatic cancer since 2013, a period chronicled by Barbara Kopple in the documentary “Miss Sharon Jones!” Jones was known for her extraordinary energy as a performer, a quality that proved…
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EXCLUSIVE: Paul Newman’s Lost Masterpiece — And How We Rediscovered It
Paul Newman directed a pioneering, independent film shot at a Yiddish theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and you’ve probably never heard of it, much less had a chance to see it. It was never released beyond a short run, in 1962, for an Oscar nomination that it never got. Newman’s biographers apparently have never…
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These Were Paul Newman’s 5 (or 6) Greatest Screen Performances
Revisiting many of Paul Newman’s films for a story about his first directorial effort, “On the Harmfulness of Tobacco,” one thematic constant stays so clear it’s as if he’d made them for the purpose of stressing it: The search for principles to steer by as a man making one’s way through the world. 1) The…
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