Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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The Jewish Prayer for Healing Means More Than You Think
Maimonides said it plainly: “there is health and illness to the soul, just as there is health and illness for the body has health and gets sick.” (Shemoneh Perakim 3) And there’s a prayer for that. Generally recited when the Torah is in the process of being read and the congregation’s spirit is most intent,…
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Forward Looking Back
100 Years Ago Years ago, when we came over as immigrants and worked in factories, there was no such concept as corporate morality. Workers slept and ate in factories, which were sometimes dark, sometimes light — no one cared. People worked just to survive. Bit by bit, we developed specific industries and work became more…
The Latest
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How Bill Graham Went From Jewish Refugee to Rock Impresario
Josh Perelman was away at summer camp in Wisconsin when the counselors made an unusual decision: They decided to let the campers watch television for one night, because Live Aid was on. The event, a massive global fundraiser for Ethiopian famine relief, unfolded on two stages in July 1985, in London and Philadelphia. Dozens of…
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Film & TV This Movie Masterpiece Will Make You Rethink the Ten Commandments
In the spring of 1998, it seemed as if the meandering, directionless years of my life were over, and I was about to arrive in the promised land. I had been accepted to film school. USC sent me a list of films that I was to watch before classes started in the fall. Many were…
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5 Jewish Things About Skittles That Donald Trump Jr. May Not Know
In one of the uglier moments of the current political season, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out an image comparing Syrian refugees to a handful of poisoned Skittles. Condemnation has been pretty much universal on this one. So, we thought we’d take a moment to reclaim the innocence of Skittles and delve into some of the…
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How Filmmakers Are Using Videotherapy To Help the Bereaved in Israel
In the Israeli short “Where To?” a middle-aged man, Ofir Shaer, and his pals are looking forward to a major ball game. But it’s not just any ball game — this one is a memorial to his late son. It soon becomes clear that Shaer is so focused on his dead child that he has…
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How The Sharps Defied the Nazis and Became American Heroes
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War By Artemis Joukowsky III, foreword by Ken Burns Beacon Press, 272 pages, $25.95 Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War A film by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky Premiering 9 p.m., September 20, on PBS In some respects, Waitstill and Martha Sharp resembled other Holocaust rescuers: They were motivated by…
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The Secret Jewish History of Cat Stevens
When I went off to sleep-away camp in 1972 for the first time, the soundtrack of the summer — especially for those like me, who arrived with guitar in hand — was all Cat Stevens, all the time. By 1972, Stevens had already achieved his greatest success with a stunning trio of albums released in…
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Riveting HBO Documentary Revisits Charlie Hebdo Terror Attacks
The cashier tried to stop him. You can’t come in now, she said. But he brushed past her, explaining he just needed bread for Shabbat. Moments later he was dead. All this was recorded on security footage at a kosher supermarket in Paris, a reminder — if one were needed — of the frailty of…
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Why I Remain Connected to the Family of Jews
Some years ago, a close relative — I’ll call him “Cousin Yankel” — got himself into trouble and landed in the local paper. Yankel was a Hasid who’d spent his entire life in sheltered environs, and one day, soon after he got his driver’s license, he made an illegal turn and was pulled over by…
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Why Jewish Critics Were Afraid of Edward Albee
The playwright Edward Albee, who died on September 16 at age 88, is acclaimed today as the author of “The Zoo Story” (1958), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1962), and “A Delicate Balance” (1966). Yet decades ago, he was slated by a number of American Jewish writers, before ultimately being inspired by friendship with a…
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