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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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These 3 Jewish Inventions Are Tailor-Made For Celebrating Rosh Hashanah
Written more than 1,000 years ago, one prayer lies in wait at the heart of every High Holiday service: U’ntane Tokef (translation: “We Give This Day Its Power”). It reads like the voiceover from a trailer for a new season of “Game of Thrones”: “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is…
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Meet Donald Trump’s $20,000 Jewish Speed Painter
The speed-painter and “performer,” Michael Israel, recently found a creation he made 10 years ago at the forefront of a political controversy, involving of course, none other than Donald Trump. Back in 2007, Trump and his wife Melania attended a charity hosted by HomeSafe, which helps homeless and abused children, at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private estate…
The Latest
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The Transparent Jewish History of Jeffrey Tambor
‘There’s Lear or there’s Maura,” Jeffrey Tambor told me. “I chose Maura.” Maura is Maura (née Mort) Pfefferman, at the center of the Amazon Prime streaming series “Transparent.” In her late 60s, she reintroduces herself as transgender to her estranged wife and children — each of whom, to use a show business expression, has his…
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Can an Orthodox Jew See the World Through Palestinian Eyes?
Acclaimed Orthodox Jewish documentary filmmaker Menachem Daum is not one to shy away from controversy. In his newest film, “The Ruins of Lifta: Where the Holocaust and Nakba Meet,” which he produced with longtime collaborator Oren Rudavsky, he explores his personal feelings, as a child of Holocaust survivors, towards the Palestinians. Daum is best known…
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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…
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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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Opinion Trump is forcing liberal Zionists to confront an extraordinarily inconvenient truth
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Opinion Zohran Mamdani is right about what ‘intifada’ means — well, kind of
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Opinion Will the U.S. get involved in Iran? Mike Huckabee’s evangelical worldview may be the key
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Fast Forward Trump is keeping the world guessing about his Iran intentions. Could his first term offer clues?
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Fast Forward In tearful address, Mamdani laments criticism following his ‘globalize the intifada’ comments
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