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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WATCH: Steven Sondheim Revisits One of His Most Brilliant Failures
One of the highlights of the recent New York Film Festival was the premiere of Lonny Price’s documentary “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened,” which goes behind the scenes of one of Broadway’s most legendary failures, “Merrily We Roll Along,” directed by Harold Prince with a score by Steven Sondheim. Though Sondheim’s score…
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Did Radical Politics Undercut the Work of This Brilliant Photographer?
Louis Stettner, the American Jewish photographer who died on October 13 at age 93, produced images governed by Socialist ideals to the point where a full understanding of his creative personality requires looking at his works in other media. After early inspiration to take up photography by encounters with such talents as Alfred Steiglitz and…
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In a Catholic Town, a Tribute and Reunion For Poland’s Jews
I came to Poland for the opening of a new Jewish museum in Czestochowa, and found myself participating in a four-day “reunion,” as it was called, though most of the 125 participants seemed to be meeting for the first time. They were, almost all of them, Jews from Israel, the U.S., and other countries whose…
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Why Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan Has a Yiddish Soul
It was not two days ago that I was making a point in a private e-mail in which I reached for this example from the pen of the newest Nobel Laureate for Literature: “Time and love has branded me with its claws/Had to go to Florida/Dodging them Georgia laws/Poor Boy in a hotel called The…
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What Did Alan Greenspan ‘Know’?
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Alan Greenspan has been many things to many people. In monetary policy, he was the patron saint of central bankers or a sinner who brought about the global financial crisis, depending who made the assessment and when. In life, he was a…
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Yes, Bob Dylan Writes Literature. Next Question?
Bob Dylan’s been a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature for many years, but I don’t think any of us really thought he’d ever win. Now that he has, the question remains, what’s left? He’s already won all the other awards – medals of honor and freedom from the American and French governments,…
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7 Bob Dylan Songs For Donald Trump
Donald Trump is president-elect. We thought you’d like to know what the bard might have to say about that. Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize for literature did manage to take our minds off the political season, but only for a short while. Now that the excitement has died down, we’re back to politics as usual. And…
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Music How Twitter Responded to Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize
For at least a moment or two, Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Literature set the world of Twitter abuzz. The announcement inspired a bevy of reactions. Some welcomed the choice as an acknowledgment that Dylan redefined what literature means in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Putting aside world & will now listen to…
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Paul Simon’s Secret Jewish Life
Modern klezmer music got its biggest boost in audience and record sales when, in the 1990s, classical violinist Itzhak Perlman rediscovered the music of his ancestors, got in touch with the leading lights of the revival, brought them with him to Poland to “find” the roots of the music, made a documentary, headlined an all-star…
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The Best and Worst Things About Bob Dylan Winning the Nobel Prize
Now that Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, we find this to be an appropriate time to consider the best and worst aspects of this amazing honor. THE BEST THINGS 1) It expands the definition of what constitutes great literature. 2) It vindicates all of us who suffered through the albums…
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How Oakland Turned Into a Heaven for Literary Translators
More than four hundred translators working in several dozen languages attended the American Literary Translators’ Association conference in Oakland this past weekend. The conference, known as ALTA, is probably the only event in America where you can go from a Russian translators’ dinner to a Kurdish-English poetry reading to a book fair consisting entirely of…
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