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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Why a Good, Close Shave Is Like a False Messiah
It was either a cheap two-blade Bic or a generic Gillette knock-off razor. Given the almost pathological thriftiness my family had, I assume it was probably the cheaper option, whichever it was. I recall that when I saw the wall of razors at the drug store offering multiple blades and clean shaves, I realized that…
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For Survivor’s Grandson, Holocaust Still Reverberates in ‘East-West Street’
East-West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” By Philippe Sands Knopf, $32.50 448 pages At the beginning of Philippe Sands’s tour de force “East West Street: On the Origins of ‘Genocide’ and ‘Crimes Against Humanity,’” Sands offers a quote from the French psychoanalyst Nicolas Abraham. “What haunts are not the dead,…
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Never-Before-Seen Diane Arbus Photos on View at the Met
The new Diane Arbus show, which opened on July 12 at the Met Breuer, feels disorienting, even dizzying, at first, but not because of the content of the photographs or the overwhelming number of them (over 100). The second floor has been set up with rows of skinny, floor-to-ceiling panels in a diagonal arrangement, which…
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Could SymPop Be the Future of Jewish Artistic Collaboration?
Most of us experience art and culture at a distance. We dutifully take in an exhibition, attend a concert or a play and watch a movie, but in each instance we encounter a finished product: a framed painting or photograph, a polished performance, 90 minutes of screen time. Opportunities for engaging with the artistic process…
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Poetry As A Service? Lyricists Pen Verses to Public On Street
Armed with their typewriters and the whims of passersby as inspiration, a number of writers are seeking to bring the craft of poetry to the masses — by writing poems on request for people on the street. Bill Keys can often be found in the depths of Washington Square Park or Central Park, where he…
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A 3-Hour Play About the Oslo Accords Is Surprisingly Entertaining
According to a famous study conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron two decades ago, all it takes to fall in love with someone is to stare at the person for four minutes and ask a series of 36 personal questions. “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers,” Aron and his…
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The Emails of Natalie Portman, Jonathan Safran Foer — and Neal Pollack
“When The Times suggested this piece, and it became clear we weren’t going to be in the same place for long enough to allow for a traditional profile… I was happy to think of the lost correspondence being somehow replenished with, or redeemed by, a new exchange.” (email from Jonathan Safran Foer to Natalie Portman,…
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Woody Allen Yearns For a More Glamorous Time — Again
There was a time when Woody Allen set the tone for the culture. In movies like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Stardust Memories” and “Zelig” he represented and satirized East Coast intellectuals, appealing to a generation of college-educated baby boomers through a mix of self-deprecatory and highbrow humor. With cameo appearances by Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow,…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago Chinese v. Yiddish If you really want to understand the psychology of the people who live in New York City’s different ethnic quarters, it’s worthwhile to take a trip to one of the neighborhood’s magistrate courts, which deals with the resolution of local disputes and petty crimes. In Essex Market Court,…
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Viewing the World Through Chicken Goggles
History is written by the victor which is why when Bill Gates said in late June that he would raise chickens the world listened. The authority of Meg O’Day — an award-winning hen from 1956-1957 who is stuffed and presiding over a public installation in the lobby of the National Museum of American Jewish History…
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9 Jewish Facts About the Planet Jupiter
To the delight of space geeks worldwide, NASA’s spacecraft Juno has sent back its first images from Jupiter. While there’s a vaguely amusing linguistic case to be made that the planet’s name makes it the most Jewish of the spheres, here are some slightly less nebulous – space pun unavoidable – reasons to celebrate “Jew”-piter….
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