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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Will ‘Candide’ Help NYC Opera’s ‘Garden Grow?’
Candide might have been an idiot. But the New York City Opera was no fool to stage the operetta, which closed on Sunday after a two-week run. Voltaire’s novella is well suited to light opera, a madcap satire on 18th century Europe. And the work of composer Leonard Bernstein, librettist Hugh Wheeler, producer Harold Prince…
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The Holocaust Memoir I Didn’t Help Write — And Wish I Had
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Nolan Gurfinkiel belonged to the dwindling tribe of Holocaust survivors who used to eat at my parents’ Shabbos table. He was a Schindler Jew, one of about 1,200 Krakow Jews who survived through the good offices of Oskar Schindler, Europe’s most famous Righteous Gentile. Nolan wore dark…
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What I’m Going To Say in My 2020 Inauguration Speech
People my age may be too old to write an episode of “Veep,” but we can be President of the United States. Being leader of the free world is obviously less demanding than turning out a sitcom. So in 2020, instead of making calls, canvassing, signing petitions and posting them on Facebook, I’m going to…
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Bernard-Henri Lévy and the Fight Against Isis
One of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s earliest works, 1979’s “The Testament of God,” argued that Jewish tradition holds an answer to the challenges of what he had earlier termed “barbarism with a human face.” “The Testament of God” was one of the books that propelled Lévy to become one of France’s leading public intellectuals. Now, thirty-five years…
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Richard Spencer’s Master’s Thesis Was an Anti-Semitic Critique — of a Jewish Philosopher
There’s lots to be puzzled by when it comes Richard Spencer, popularizer of the term “alt-right,” the label preferred by contemporary white supremacists. Given that white Europeans colonized America (brutally, we might add), how does he justify thinking the country fundamentally belongs to them? As certain press outlets — in moves of misjudgment that seem…
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Meet The Jewish Photographers Who Helped Shape The Image Of The Civil Rights Movement
In 1965, Martin Luther King told photographer James “Spider” Martin, “we could have marched, we could have protested forever, but if it weren’t for guys like you, it would have been for nothing. The whole world saw your pictures. That’s why the Voting Rights Act passed.” This is, of course, a case of overstated humility,…
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‘Fun Home’ Librettist, Composer-Playwright Win Kleban Prizes for Writing in Musical Theater
Librettist Lisa Kron, best known for writing the book and lyrics to the Broadway darling “Fun Home,” and Daniel Zaitchik, a composer-playwright whose work has been developed by Lincoln Center Theater, have won the 2017 Kleban Prizes for writing in musical theater. The prizes, which comes with a cool $100,000, are awarded by the Kleban…
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To Preserve Sounds of Immigrant America, Ellis Island Museum Seeks Yiddish-Speaking Volunteers
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration has, in its database, more than 8,780 sound recordings from the early 20th century both by and about people considered to be “outsiders” in the United States. Included in that group were immigrants. Now, the Museum is trying to make…
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A Farewell to Wonders of America
A lifetime ago, when I first began my training as an historian of America’s Jews, I came across a remark by Jacob Glatstein, the Yiddish modernist poet, that underscored what was at stake in my newly-chosen field. Asked what it meant to be a “poet of an abandoned culture,” Glatstein famously replied: “It means I…
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45 Years Later, the Documentary Leonard Cohen Didn’t Want You To See
The newly released yet very old documentary, “Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire,” offers a behind-the-scenes look at the poet/singer/songwriter on his 1972 European tour. That it has taken over 40 years for it to get its first North American run is an indication that the process was as complicated as its subject. Director Tony…
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How You Know You’re a Detroit Jew
You know that you’re a Proud Detroit Jew, because for decades you boasted about growing up less than a mile away from the house of Smokey Robinson. Maybe you never saw him “Shop Around,” but you could point out his house on Outer Drive. You still brag about the fact that you saw little Michael…
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