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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Finding a Jewish Homeland — Just Northwest of Buffalo
Isra Isle By Nava Semel, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen Mandel Vilar Press, 240 pages, $16.95 The boom in Jewish alternate history continues. Following on the heels of Lavie Tidhar’s novel, “A Man Lies Dreaming” (about Adolf Hitler failing to become the Führer of Nazi Germany), Emily Barton’s “The Book of Esther” (about…
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The Secret Jewish History of the Doomsday Clock
In 2017, contention for the title of the day’s worst piece of news is tight. Is it the portent of a coming crackdown on voting rights? The felony charges for 6 reporters covering protests of President Donald Trump’s inauguration? (Ok, that was earlier this week, but still.) The doubling of membership fees at exclusive clubs…
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How Mary Tyler Moore Brought Real Jewish Characters to the World
(JTA) — There are plenty of paradigms in the history of humor for how Jews and non-Jews get along, or don’t: as persecutors and victims, as saviors and saved, as allies against a common oppressor. All these are fraught with the tensions between the powerful and the disempowered, which makes sense: Fear drives humor. But…
The Latest
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Worried About Dystopia? ‘1984’ Isn’t The Only Novel You Should Read
On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, suggested that when Press Secretary Sean Spicer spouted falsehoods about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration during a Saturday press conference, he was not lying, but simply relying on “alternative facts.” If a portent of doom can have unintended positive consequences, that phrase…
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The History Behind Sean Spicer’s Favorite Breakfast Food – Orbit Gum
Sean Spicer, the new White House Press Secretary, is, well, a very weird guy. Leaving aside his unfashionable, dogmatic loyalism and his , we still have his tweets. His glorious glorious tweets. The long standing Dippin’ Dots feud (“Dippin dots is NOT the ice cream of the future,” Spicer declared in 2010. “I think I…
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How 1986 Meetings I Set Up Between Top Israelis and Palestinians Still Offer Hope
Editor’s Note: For more than 30 years, Stephen P. Cohen served as a confidential intermediary between Israeli and Arab leaders including Shimon Peres, Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Hafez al-Assad. Over the course of a career that took him to all corners of the Middle East, Cohen arranged and participated in historic breakthroughs…
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Vintage Slapstick Movies Show Just How Much, And How Little, Racism Has Changed
Watching a comedy from the silent film era is, as the Museum of Modern Art’s website suggests, to stare directly into the “vast subconscious that is American slapstick.” And, based on the title that the museum has chosen for its series of silent film screenings, “Cruel and Unusual Comedy: Astonishing Shorts from the Slapstick Era,”…
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Anne Frank Center Hits Back At Trump Over Looming Immigration Orders
News broke yesterday that President Donald Trump would, today, sign executive orders that require the construction of a Mexican border wall, halt entry to the country for Syrian refugees, and suspend entry for travelers from majority-Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. Today, the Anne Frank Center For Mutual Respect, the Otto Frank-founded American affiliate…
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Milo Yiannopoulos Publisher Hits Back Over Lucrative Book Deal
When infamous Breitbart senior editor and proponent of the so-called “alt-right” Milo Yiannopoulos was offered a $250,000 book contract deal from Threshold Editions, a Simon & Schuster imprint, authors, critics, and artists responded with fury. (The Chicago Review of Books, for instance, responded by announcing that it would review no Simon & Schuster titles in…
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What Red State Jews Tell Us About Ourselves — and Trump’s America
Since the November election, there’s been a lot of talk among journalists about the way our profession overlooked and misunderstood populist, pro-Trump America. It’s a challenge for us at the Forward, as well. That is why we are launching “Red State Jews.” Our aim is to use all the platforms of the Forward — news,…
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Did a 1980s Spy Novel Inspire Trump’s Love For Russia — And His Run For President?
Is a spy novel from the early 1980s, penned by a former British intelligence officer preoccupied with the post-World War II relationships of Germany, Russia, the United States, and – occasionally – Israel, responsible for President Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the office of Commander in Chief? In another political season, that question might provoke a…
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