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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How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
For this author, 'The Apprentice' is a chillingly accurate film that hits way too close to home
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A Plea for Remembrance — and for Forgetting
Not too long ago, my bubbe and zayde lived in a crowded apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was a place filled with books and Yiddish newspapers strewn over the armchairs (the Forward, Die Morgen Journal, Der Algemeiner). There was a sense of holy, righteous and predetermined doom, as though all the…
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How Solomon Schechter’s Daughter Became a Card-Carrying Communist
<image In my mind’s eye, I see my great-aunt Amy. She is leading a march, striding toward a line of police officers wielding batons, her hands clenched in determination and worry. She is speaking at a rally, extolling the need for working men and women to organize, warning that the bosses will resist efforts to…
The Latest
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Did Dismantling of States Make the Worst of the Holocaust a Reality?
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning By Timothy Snyder Tim Duggan Books, 462 pages, $30 In two generations, we have witnessed a massive shift in our attitude toward the Holocaust: from regarding it as incomprehensible, defying human understanding, to trying to construct rigorous, often competing historical explanations for its causes and contours. There…
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Worshipping Koufax, Worshipping God
My father, a first-generation American, was an accountant, which is relevant because he was a sedentary, chubby, somewhat bookish man who never tossed a ball with me, not once, and who paid no attention to Major League Baseball. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were millions of Jewish fathers who were accountants…
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The Thrill of Family for Bestselling Novelist Brad Meltzer
Brad Meltzer, 45, is a bestselling novelist of thrillers like “The President’s Shadow,” and children’s books like “I Am Albert Einstein,” as well as a host for the To research his thrillers, Meltzer has received help from fans like Presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush. His wife, Cori Meltzer, 45, is a lawyer and…
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Music Pianist James Rhodes and the Keys to Survival
Born in 1975, the British Jewish musician James Rhodes has experienced a fairly dramatic trajectory, which he described in his recent autobiography, “Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music.” As Rhodes revealed in a blog in the Daily Telegraph: “When I was at school I was sexually abused. Let me clarify: I was serially…
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‘Son of Saul’ Captures Intense Brutality of Auschwitz
The most iconic face of this year’s Cannes Film Festival did not belong to Emma Stone or to Cate Blanchett, — to mention two celebrities who walked the red carpet — nor to Ingrid Bergman, whose silver image graced the festival’s banners and posters; it was the sunken, haunted face of Geza Röhrig the 48-year-old…
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Film & TV How an Orthodox 6-Year-Old Became the Star of ‘Hotel Transylvania 2’
When five-year-old Asher Blinkoff strode off into the audition room, his father, Saul, was a little nervous. An old pro of the movie industry, Saul has directed several films himself and worked for Walt Disney Animation Studios before that. He knew what to expect, but to leave his son in a room full of strangers…
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The Secret Jewish History of Joni Mitchell
Last spring, obituary writers were scrambling when reports began surfacing that Joni Mitchell was knockin’ on heaven’s door. Rumors had the folk-rock poet lying on the floor at home for days before someone found her either unconscious, in a medically induced coma and near death, or out of a coma but paralyzed and unable to…
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How Peggy Guggenheim Re-Invented Modernism
Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern By Francine Prose Yale University Press, 240 pages, $25 I feel compelled to begin my review of the novelist Francine Prose’s biography of art dealer and collector Peggy Guggenheim with a lengthy quote from another writer, in this case the Russian playwright Vladimir Sorokin, who wrote about Guggenheim…
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Why Glaciers Are the Most Jewish Geological Formation — and Other Lessons From Alaska
The glaciers in Alaska are a natural wonder to behold. I ‘ve been spending some days around them (via boats) and over them (via float planes). They remind me, funnily enough, of the Bible and its story of what the world looked like before God populated the earth with some Jews, some anti-Semites and everyone…
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Fast Forward Was the viral Ta-Nehisi Coates interview a hit piece or fair play? A journalism ethics expert weighs in.
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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Culture New conspiracy theory just dropped — Jews are causing the hurricanes
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Sports 5 Jewish things about the Mets — and why Jewish fans adore them
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish דער אתרוג ווי אַ סגולה צו האָבן קינדער — און נאָך סוכּות־טראַדיציעסThe etrog as a charm to bear children, and other Sukkot traditions
ייִדן האָבן באַשיט די ערד פֿון דער סוכּה מיט פֿײַנעם געלן זאַמד
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Opinion On Yom Kippur, my brother-in-law is still a hostage. How do I atone for that?
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Fast Forward Ta-Nehisi Coates says Harris funding Gaza war as first Black female president would be ‘nightmare’
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Fast Forward Family recovers Monet pastel generations after Nazi looting
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