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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Ringling Brothers’ Alana Feld Didn’t Have To Run Away To Join the Circus
After 146 years, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus is packing up its tents for good. For a half-century, the iconic American entertanment company has been owned by the Feld family. Here’s how Alana Feld described her life’s work in the three-ring world in a Forward interview last year. Alana Feld runs her business…
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Learning From The Complex Jewish Stories of FringeNYC
It’s good, it’s bad, it’s very enthusiastic: FringeNYC has been rampaging through the city since August 12th, and will close on August 28th. I’ve been exploring some of the festival’s Jewish-interest offerings, and while some have closed, here’s what I’ve learned. Gilad Shalit’s saga is still compelling Cassie M. Seinuk’s “From the Deep,” which closed…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago New Faces at Ellis Island There are few Jews in this country that have no connection to Castle Garden or Ellis Island. Each and every Jew laughed and cried, danced and wailed, on Ellis Island. Thousands of Jews would arrive there every day. Their American Jewish families would greet them and…
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Yes, She’s Art Spiegelman’s Daughter. Her Memoir Is Stunning.
At some point, most people I know who can see have had, and then made fun of, a conversation about whether we perceive colors in the same way. It’s a question that’s easy to dismiss, mostly because it tends to be asked in states of something other than sobriety; but it’s not a subject of…
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Menachem Pressler’s Life in Music From Kristallnacht to Lang Lang
The German-born Israeli-American pianist Menahem Pressler will be 93 in December. Best recalled as long-time cornerstone of the Beaux Arts Trio, Pressler has since thrived as a solo performer and collaborative musician. He also continues a distinguished teaching career at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University and overseas. “This Desire for Beauty”, a book…
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How Pianist Irving Fields Redefined Jewish Music
Irving Fields, the songwriter and pianist who died on August 20 at age 101, revealed talent that transcended the question of what is authentic Jewish music. Born Yitzhak Schwartz in New York to parents from Minsk and Pinsk, he was raised in Coney Island and Bensonhurst. An amateur choir singer, his father got him involved…
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How Steven Hill, ‘Law & Order’ Actor, Chose Orthodox Faith Over Stardom
Steven Hill, an actor who died on August 23 at age 94, showed how the solution for existential unease may be found in Jewish ritual rather than in a life devoted to performance. Born Solomon Krakovsky in Seattle, Hill won fame from 1990 to 2000 in the role of Manhattan District Attorney Adam Schiff on…
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Play Inspired By Gilad Shalit Finds Humanity In Captivity
The day after I saw Cassie M. Seinuk’s “From the Deep,” a play about the mental struggles of captivity, at NYC Fringe, I ran into Charles Linshaw, one of two actors in the play, waiting in line to see another Fringe production. Even though I knew that Linshaw, who plays the Israeli Ilan in “From…
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Cynthia Ozick Has Issues — And Come To Think of It, So Do We
CRITICS, MONSTERS, FANATICS, AND OTHER LITERARY ESSAYS By Cynthia Ozick Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 224 pages, $25 It’s a little tricky, perhaps, to complain about Cynthia Ozick’s take on book reviewers in “Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays” when I made my living for many years reviewing books. How can I play anything other than…
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Why Yiddish Is Gaining Traction in Secular Households
There once was a place known as Yiddish Land. It wasn’t a country. In fact, it lived and breathed for a thousand years in total disregard for the invisible borders sovereign nations fought and died over. Its citizens — German Jews, Polish Jews, Jews throughout Central Europe and across the world — numbered nearly 12…
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How To Read The Talmud With Strings Attached
How many guitars do you have?” a friend asked me recently, knowing that a new one was about to arrive. “Oh, we don’t count them,” I told her jokingly as my wife, Barbara, raised her hands and flashed her palms with all her fingers up. “All I can say,” I said, “is that if they…
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