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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Where All the Reasons To Kill Are Absurd
By Kamel Daoud, translated from the French by John Cullen Other Press, 160 Pages, $14.95 Kamel Daoud kick-starts his novel with the line “Mama’s still alive today,” turning inside out the celebrated opening of Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”: “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” What would Camus say were he alive today,…
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Melting Pot in Milwaukee
Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum, 32, is the spiritual leader of Congregation Shir Hadash, a Reconstructionist congregation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her husband, Joel Berenbaum, 31, is currently studying to be a special education teacher at Alverno College and runs the Spiritual World of Nature program at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. He is also co-chair of the Jewish…
The Latest
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What’s in an Old Dictionary? Plenty of Anti-Semitism.
When I was in my sophomore year of high school, I spent many of my lunch hours eating alone. I would sit on a knee-high bench in the locker room, in one of the music wing’s boxy practice rooms or at a table in the expansive domed cafeteria we called the Great Hall. Afterward I…
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I Went To New Hampshire To Buy J.D. Salinger’s House
I have traveled to Cornish, New Hampshire, with the intention of buying J.D. Salinger’s house. Last year, when the house went on the market, it was listed for $679,000, but now Jane Darrach, the real estate agent for the property, has told me the price has dropped to “585-ish.” It seems like a lot of…
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Of Sarah Silverman, Susanna Heschel and 8 Other Things About Jewish New Hampshire
10,120 Jews live in New Hampshire. In the late 19th century, Abraham and Rachel Isaac founded what was reported New Hampshire’s first Jewish business, which was called “The Cheap Shop.” New Hampshire’s oldest synagogue is Temple Adath Yeshurun of Manchester, founded in 1891. Poet Maxine Kumin lived on a farm in the town of Warner….
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Bill T. Jones’s Slow Dance Through History
‘You like them kosher, don’t you, Bill?” Edith Zane observed when she learned that her late son’s partner, the African-American dancer Bill T. Jones, had taken up with another Jew. Jones recalls this conversation drily, not bothered by the teasing. She was right about his predilections. “There’s no accident that I’ve had three major loves,…
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9 Can’t-Miss Shows at Kulturfest
Hard as it is to believe, KulturfestNYC is the first ever international festival of Jewish performing arts of its kind to be held in the Big Apple. These sorts of multi-disciplinary, weeklong events take place all over the world — from Toronto to Krakow — but never before in one week under one umbrella could…
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Film & TV Remembering Fagin and Ron Moody, the Man Who Played Him
The British Jewish actor Ron Moody, who died on June 11 at age 91, will be remembered for making Charles Dickens’ harshly anti-Semitic character Fagin into someone loveable. In stage productions and the 1968 film of the musical Oliver!, Moody, who was born Ronald Moodnick, became the definitive interpreter of the role, despite the reservations…
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Jason Alexander Talks Broadway, Israel, and Killing Susan
Jason Alexander is the star of stage, screen and Festivus. Of late, too, he has been a major trending topic on the Internet, all because of some poisoned envelopes. Alexander played George Costanza for nine seasons on Seinfeld. In season seven, he was engaged to Susan (Heidi Swedberg), who sadly met the grim reaper while…
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Art You Are Your Parents — and These Stunning Pictures Prove It
It all started with my grandfather, Sidney Goldstein, and his Korean War memoir. I found it several years ago while helping clean out my grandparents’ garage. I was 26 when I read it for the first time, and he was 27 when he wrote the letters his memoir was based on. I knew he’d written…
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Vilna Becomes ‘Vilnius’ and Lithuanian is Making Itself Heard
100 Years Ago An entire family of Italians is in Beth Israel Hospital for circumcisions after converting to Judaism. Joseph Petrigliano and his three sons, who live on Orchard Street in Corona, part of Long Island, N.Y., decided to convert to Judaism after Petrigliano’s Jewish wife, an immigrant from Galicia, told him of her recurring…
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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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 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
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