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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In Berlin, A Remembrance of Synagogues Past
How do you take a walk down memory lane if you don’t have any memories of your own? That’s what I was asking myself on September 11 of this year, when the United States was commemorating the 15th anniversary of a great domestic tragedy and I was in Berlin, participating in yet another attempt to…
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Why Sukkot Is the Most Magical Holiday of All
‘I can’t wait for Sukkot.” An expression of anticipatory excitement coming from a fellow member of my temple? Our rabbi? My Orthodox cousins? It was the 13-year-old son of our non-Jewish neighbors. And another piece of evidence of a remarkable phenomenon our family has discovered about the holiday: That it is magic. No, it’s not…
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The Secret Jewish History of the NBC Peacock
“Why would anybody be interested in my mishegas?” Larry Pomerance is 82 and still smokes. He sits on a windy terrace eating a bialy. I’ve known Larry for eight years and I can say without qualification that what he terms “mishegas” is funny and worth sharing. Not that I didn’t have to practically pull teeth…
The Latest
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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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Why the Tallit Is Making a Comeback
Funny how it takes a kerfuffle to get people thinking about what they wear, especially within the precincts of the sanctuary. In the wake of Donald Trump’s donning a prayer shawl, or tallit, while visiting an African-American church in September, I, like many of you, took to the Internet to learn more. Was the wearing…
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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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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Yiddish „צײַטזאָנע“ — אַ ציקל לידער פֿון דזשייק שנײַדער‘Time Zone’ — poetry by Jake Schneider
דער מחבר איז אַן אַמעריקאַנער־געבוירענער ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט, פּאָעט און איבערזעצער אין בערלין.