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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In Chicago, Come for the Iran Nuke Deal. Stay for the Smoked Salmon.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago is holding a special meeting today to discuss the Chicago Jewish community’s response to the Iran deal. The Jewish Federation is the most important Jewish organization in Chicago and the meeting today will be attended by members of many Jewish organizations,…
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Welcome to the Jewish Jungle of Suriname
We walked through the muggy jungle battling swarms of bizarre multicolored insects that had probably not yet been discovered by science. As I cleared the brush with a forceful swing of my machete, I wondered what it would have been like to live here 400 years ago when the first Jews arrived. Wait, Jews in…
The Latest
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Yosi Piamenta, a Virtuoso Guitarist Who Reshaped Jewish Music
Legendary Jewish guitarist Yosi Piamenta died on August 23 after a difficult struggle with cancer. He was 64. Piamenta was a virtuoso guitarist who had a long career performing original music as well as traditional Jewish, Israeli and Arabic songs arranged in his signature style. Born in Israel on November 29, 1951, Piamenta moved to…
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How a Nice Jewish Couple Became Hip Hop Dance’s King and Queen
Nine men in black suits stand in a line across the back of the stage as the first words of Agent Smith’s monologue from “The Matrix Reloaded” come over the speakers: “As you well know, appearances can be deceiving, which brings me back to the reason why we’re here.” Suddenly, the suits multiply; clones appear…
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Film & TV ‘Straight Outta Compton’ Is Surprisingly Good to the Jews
One of the more surprising aspects of “Straight Outta Compton” — F. Gary Gray’s propulsive and vibrant, if rather disjointed, film about the rise and fall of the seminal rap group N.W.A — is how dainty it is when it comes to portraying Jews and anti-Semitism. Whatever its merits and shortcomings, like the music it…
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Can Tel Aviv Help Cure My Son’s Diabetes?
Sometimes it’s better to leave the things we buy in the boxes they come in. Such was the case with the Hammacher Schlemmer recumbent exercise bicycle (assembly required) that I bought for my teenage son after he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and needed to stay on the move to bring his blood sugar…
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He’s Saying Hashem, But It Sounds Like Hare Krishna
Picture this: a rabbi who is also a martial artist leads a style of ancient Indian chanting in Hebrew. A knit yarmulke rests upon his flowing gray hair, and during Jewish mystical chants, he plays a harmonium — which looks like a cross between a keyboard and accordion — or sometimes just his guitar. He…
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Film & TV Is the World Ready for a Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Talk Show?
Daytime television may soon be getting a little more exciting. This fall, Shmuley Boteach — the TV personality and Orthodox rabbi who isn’t afraid to talk very publicly and very explicitly about sex, intimacy and all things private — is hosting a new talk show, “Divine Intervention.” In this case, Boteach is that divine intervention…
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Music Who Will Be the Next Itzhak Perlman?
On August 31, the superstar Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman turns 70, and amid the mazel tovs, music lovers might wonder who will take over his prominent role in musical life when he is ready to retire. Fiddling is a demanding profession, rarely pursued at its highest levels by septuagenarians. Even the Olympian Jascha Heifetz scaled…
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Frida Kahlo’s Jewish Lover
Staring out of more than 50 portraits spread across a sprawling third-floor gallery, Frida Kahlo’s intense gaze greets visitors to the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. But an unseen face on the other side of the camera looms just as large. Nickolas Muray was the Hungarian-born Jew who photographed Kahlo for over a decade…
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Could This Be The Future of the Jewish (Meta) Novel?
The Book of Numbers By Joshua Cohen Random House, 592 pages, $28 ‘This will kill that.” As the medieval archdeacon Claude Frollo in Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” speaks this prophecy of obsolescence, he points to a printed book and then a cathedral. Mass literacy, Hugo implies, eroded authoritarian Catholicism and replaced massive,…
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