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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Debbie Reynolds Dies at 84 — Just Day After Daughter Carrie Fisher
Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, who sang and danced her way into the hearts of millions of moviegoers around the world in musicals like “Singin’ in the Rain,” died on Wednesday at age 84, her son said. Reynolds, one of the most enduring and endearing Hollywood actresses, died hours after being rushed to the hospital in…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Was Better Than You Think
It’s easy to look back on 2016 and see only one thing —the November 8 election. Well, maybe if you saw “Hamilton,” which swept the Tonys 6 months and what seems like an era ago, you remember two things about this year. But to dwell only on the election (and, admittedly, it’s hard not to…
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Confessions of a Jew in a World of White Privilege
I’ve been white most of my life. About 99.7% of it. When I say I’ve been white I just mean I’ve enjoyed the perks of being a white man in America. Or not even enjoyed them. In fact, I wish I’d been aware of them enough to really savor those perks, but like most of…
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How Making Art Will Still Matter in Trump’s America
My sons called after the result of the election was announced. They were distraught and confused. I told them what I told myself: Take a short time to mourn, then get active. Join marches. Support organizations that will come under fire. Help people whose lives will be further imperiled by a frankly racist and xenophobic…
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My Grandparents Thought They Were Leaving Us a Better World
I keep thinking of my maternal grandmother. She graduated from Wellesley in 1936, as did my paternal grandmother. Two Jewish women went to elite women’s colleges in the 1930s, my mom following in 1964. Both my aunts went there too. The first woman in my immediate family not to go to Wellesley, I broke the…
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How Donald Trump’s Election Made Me Ill — Literally
The night our country went to hell, I was alone. Well, not at first. I’d been watching the returns on my couch with a college friend, a gay first-generation American who teaches art history at an Ivy League university (in other words, a repulsive member of the coastal elite like most people I know). “I’m…
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Remembering Broadway Legend George S. Irving From the Original ‘Oklahoma’
The Tony-winning character actor George S. Irving, who died on December 26 at age 94, exemplified art that conceals art. Born George Irving Shelasky to a Russian Jewish immigrant family, he adopted a stage name redolent of success, following the example of the hit playwright George S. Kaufman. Apparently the last survivor of the original…
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Richard Adams Wrote Against Intolerance — For Jews, and Everyone Else
After one of their number predicts the destruction of their home, a group of brave individuals sets out in search of a new safehaven. On their way, they escape dystopian societies — one reminiscent of Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” in which the life of the many depends on the…
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My Memorable and Hilarious Hour With Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher was sitting in her publicist’s office munching on a candy bar, drinking soda and taking on one visiting journalist after another. Each of these activities was potentially dangerous to her health, but that’s what life is like on the road when you’re promoting a new novel. It was a dozen years ago, and…
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How a Fake News Story About a Fleeing Jewish Family Spun Out of Control
In the wake of the November election, the discussion of “fake news” has taken an outsized role in our political discourse, with both the political Left and Right misusing and abusing the term. There is one instance of “fake news” hysteria that I think is particularly telling, but before we get to that, a little…
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Carrie Fisher Wasn’t Just a ‘Star Wars’ Icon — She Was an Author and Advocate, Too
In 1987, a Los Angeles Times photographer asked Carrie Fisher if it would hurt her image to pose on a bar stool. The actress and writer wasn’t concerned. “There is not one area of sensationalism that I have not wandered into and trespassed wildly,” she told reporter Nikki Finke. Fisher, who passed away this morning…
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