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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The Secret Jewish History of Shirley Jackson and ‘The Lottery’
The centenary of Shirley Jackson (1916 –1965), noted for her horror stories such as “The Lottery” (1948), and the novel “The Haunting of Hill House” (1959), will be celebrated in December. New publications and reprints commemorate this writer who has chilled millions. Claimed by Stephen King, among others, as a major influence, Jackson was married…
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Music Songwriter Carole Bayer Sager Feels a Connection to God
There’s a story in Carole Bayer Sager’s just-published memoir, “They’re Playing Our Song,” about the day she met Marvin Hamlisch. They were supposed to discuss writing the score for a TV pilot. The meeting was short; Hamlisch told her he had to leave for London to start scoring the new James Bond movie, “The Spy…
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Film & TV Have Mediocre Movies Like ‘American Pastoral’ Hurt Philip Roth’s Chances For a Nobel Prize?
If there’s one moment that bugs Philip Roth more than any in “American Pastoral,” the new film adaptation of his explosive Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 novel, I’m guessing it’s this one: During an overwrought scene of domestic conflict between Newark’s one-time golden boy Swede Levov and his bilious, radical teenage daughter Merry, the camera lingers on…
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Where Kabbalah and Mad Magazine Meet, Mark Podwal Is the Product
Dr. Mark Podwal is a Jewish artist. That is to say his art is his homeland and Judaism is the language of his country. Like body and soul they are intertwined. For many years he has been my friend and my family has used the Haggadah he illustrated with Elie Wiesel in 1993. He began…
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Books Catskills Bookstore Sparks Protests by Comparing Donald Trump to Nazis
— An upstate New York bookstore display containing the name “Trump” superimposed over a Nazi flag has spurred outrage, including from the Anti-Defamation League and supporters of the Republican nominee. Some 20 protesters demonstrated Wednesday outside the Inquiring Minds Bookstore and Cafe in the village of Saugerties against the banner, which also read “Make America Hate Again.” Some demonstrators…
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Our Favorite GIF’s From the New National Archives Collection — Featuring Bugs Bunny and Albert Einstein
The U.S. National Archives has launched its own GIF channel. Among the highlights of the 167 GIF’s, which have been discussed by Open Culture and Hyperallergic include rare footage of Woodsy Owl and a performing squirrel, along with a number of items that we found particularly interesting: Here’s one of Albert Einstein: Here’s the swastika…
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The Secret Jewish History of the Rocky Horror Picture Show
“Rocky Horror” is the cultural phenomenon that simply refuses to die. Rather, since its first incarnation as a 1973 stage musical in London, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” has been continuously reborn on the silver screen, in subsequent Broadway stage productions, and now, as a 21st-century direct-to-TV film. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do…
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Phil Chess, the Jewish Hitmaker Who Helped Create Rock ‘n’ Roll, Dies at 95
One day after his greatest discovery, Chuck Berry, turned 90, the legendary hit man Phil Chess passed away at the age of 95 (on October 19). Chess and his brother, Leonard Chess, cofounded their record label in Chicago in the late 1940s, through which they played a huge role in shepherding the careers of blues…
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How Jewish Comic Book Heroes Inspired Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop Art
Though he was the grandson of German-Jewish immigrants. Roy Lichtenstein played down his roots. But as a new exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles suggests, Lichtenstein’s Jewishness shaped the pop art pioneer’s career from his first experiments until the end of his life in 1997. “Lichtenstein’s story, in many ways, is an…
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Music How Jewish Record Men Helped Chuck Berry Invent Rock ‘n’ Roll
More than any other singular individual – including Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis – it was Chuck Berry, who turns 90 years old today, who put together the disparate musical elements, the teen-focused lyrics, and the showman’s persona that created the template for all rock ‘n’ roll music that followed. The Beatles,…
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Chicago Mercantile Exchange Chair Leo Melamed Stars in His Son’s Movie
CHICAGO — For many years, the name Leo Melamed has been virtually synonymous with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Melamed first ventured onto the trading floor in the 1950s as a law student working as a runner. The CME, when Melamed joined it, operated under the open outcry system of traders and brokers communicating through shouts…
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