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 Jewish Lesbian Activist Helped Take Down a Carjacking Ring — and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
The night Miriam Ben-Shalom helped take down a Milwaukee carjacking ring started, incongruously, at the theater. On October 22, Ben-Shalom, a lesbian activist well-known for her groundbreaking challenges to the military’s ban on gay and lesbian servicepeople, was on a date with her life partner when the duo’s car was threatened at Milwaukee’s Metro Hotel….
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Harper Lee Warned Us About Donald Trump — But We Weren’t Listening
Harper Lee tried to warn America. Twice. The first time she was redirected, politely, to take her nascent characters in a different direction. Lee accepted the editorial advice and produced “To Kill a Mockingbird,” an instant feel-good classic about how great white people can be to and for others. Central to this mythology is Atticus…
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Meet the Holocaust Lawyer Suing the FBI Over Clinton Email Investigation
Los Angeles-based lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg is best known for his work on the restitution of art stolen during the Holocaust; his quest to assist the late Maria Altmann regain Gustav Klimt paintings belonging to her family from the Austrian government was dramatized in the 2015 film “The Woman in Gold,” in which he was…
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Nato Green and San Francisco Activists Give Nancy Pelosi a New Spine — Literally
Perhaps even more disheartening than the prospect of a Trump-induced apocalypse is the reaction of the Democratic party as it stampedes towards that Apocalypse, in what often looks like a desperate race to see who can capitulate first and farthest to the new regime. Americans are being asked to “reunite a divided country,” “end the…
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Books Meet Franz Kafka and Simone de Beauvoir’s Book Designer
Earlier today, the LA Review of Books published an interview with Jewish book cover designer, Peter Mendelsund. Even if you don’t recognize the name, if you’re a reader you’ve almost certainly seen his work. Among other projects, Mendelsund has redesigned covers from the back catalogs of such notable authors as Franz Kafka, Simone De Beauvoir,…
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Did This Novel Foretell America Under Trump?
One morning back in early January, 2015, I sat down to write the novel that would become “Tell Me How This Ends Well.” I wanted to write something that explored American Jewish identity and that captured what it meant to be living through great political unrest and a sharp rise in anti-Semitism here at home…
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Was Jill Stein’s Recount Always Destined For Spectacular Failure?
Well, in perhaps the least surprising news of the week, Jill Stein’s recount has come to an inconsequential end. You may remember that back in November, Stein and the Green Party filed for election recounts in three states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Of the three, only Wisconsin actually ended up conducting a recount. The results?…
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Did Kanye and Trump Trade Jewish Gossip — or Just Say ‘L’Chaim’?
Rapper Kanye West paid a visit to Trump Tower on Tuesday to visit with the man he told an audience recently he would have voted for had he voted on Election Day. Two days after that concert, on November 21, the hip-hop superstar cancelled his remaining concerts and was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital,…
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Jake Gyllenhaal to Headline ‘Sunday in the Park With George’ Broadway Revival
It’s been a good year for Stephen Sondheim: a new musical in the works, a documentary reviving his brilliant flop “Merrily We Roll Along,” and now a star-studded revival of one of his best-loved shows, “Sunday in the Park with George,” which will have a 10 week run on Broadway this spring. The production, which…
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Music WATCH: Israel Singer Aviv Geffen’s Hebrew Version of Dylan’s ‘Hard Rain’
Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s music has enduring power; this past weekend, Patti Smith moved the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony audience to tears while singing his classic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” The song has also moved hearts and minds in Hebrew. In 2000, Israeli bard Aviv Geffen, seen as the protest musician of his generation,…
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Reclaiming Art Lost in the Holocaust is About to Become Much Easier
70 years after the end of World War II, Holocaust survivors and their families are still fighting to reclaim art stolen from them by the Nazis. For survivors in the United States, that fight is poised to become somewhat easier. This past week, both the House and Senate passed a bill that, if signed into…
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