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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How Av Isaacs Shaped Toronto’s Art Scene
Steve Martin, the actor, has curated a blockbuster Canadiana show on one floor, and a dazzling installation by Chicago art star Theaster Gates occupies another. But the most unusual exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario may be its tribute to Avrom Isaacovitch. Born in Winnipeg to Polish immigrants, Isaacovitch moved to Toronto in 1941,…
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Books A Memoir of Treyf Truthtelling
“There’s always more to all of us,” Elissa Altman explained to me over the phone when talking about the impetus for her second memoir, “Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw,” which is out next week. Altman — a cookbook editor, food writer and James Beard Foundation award-winning author of the blog Poor Man’s Feast…
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400-Year-Old Torah Discovered in Portugal
My 1996 novel “The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon,” begins with the discovery of medieval Portuguese-Jewish manuscripts in the basement of a house being refurbished. So I was initially amazed and then unsurprised when people started messaging me that a 16th or 17th Century Torah scroll found in the small Portuguese city of Covilhã had just…
The Latest
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An Auschwitz Home Movie Scored by Eric Clapton
‘I’d always avoided Auschwitz,” Philippe Mora says near the beginning of his new documentary, “Three Days in Auschwitz.” “I was like, ‘Who wants to go to Auschwitz?’” Mora’s question is, at least on the surface, perfectly understandable. After all, with any number of exotic and enticing locations currently available for our visiting or vacationing pleasure,…
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1,000-Year-Old ‘Afghan Genizah’ Offers Window on Lost World of Silk Road Jews
The National Library of Israel has purchased the “Afghan Genizah” collection brought to Israel by Israeli antiquities dealer Lenny Wolfe some 10 months ago. The collection includes about 250 documents, most from the 11th century, and were most likely discovered in a cave in northern Afghanistan. About 100 of the manuscripts probably came from the…
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Film & TV ‘High Maintenance’ Is an Elegy for a Dying Profession
It’s ironic that “High Maintenance,” a new HBO series about a New York City pot dealer, appears just as its subject is about to become a thing of the past. As marijuana legalization spreads across the country, buying weed will soon be no sketchier than getting frozen yogurt. But even if “High Maintenance” is a…
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Books Susie Fishbein Says Goodbye to Iconic ‘Kosher By Design’ Series
(JTA) — When Susie Fishbein wrote her first “Kosher By Design” cookbook nearly 15 years ago, she saw an opening in the market for a book in the style of mainstream cooks like Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. “Those were my idols,” she told JTA. As such, Fishbein dreamed of writing a kosher cookbook that…
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Mordecai Richler Gets a Mural in Montreal — And His Son Approves
Mordecai Richler has always been a larger-than-life presence in Montreal. Now, that’s literally the case. The City of Montreal has unveiled an official mural dedicated to the late author, who captured the city’s singular Jewish character — and skewered its often surreal language politics — in potent essays and canonical novels like “The Apprenticeship of…
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10 Overlooked Jewish Films That You Can Stream For Free Right Now
The Internet is filled with oddities and lost gems. We took a dive into YouTube and found that some of the most interesting Jewish films are out there. And you can watch them right now. 1) The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz Ted Kotcheff’s 1974 screen adaptation of Mordechai Richler’s classic coming-of-age novel starred a young…
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Happy 100th Birthday to Roald Dahl — Beloved Author and Vile Anti-Semite
Born on September 13, 1916, Roald Dahl, the beloved author of “Matilda” and “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” would have turned 100 today. It’s an anniversary we mark with admiration and a bit of uncertainty as well. For, aside from his brilliant imaginaton and wicked sense of humor, Dahl was also something of an…
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Why Isn’t Frederick Kiesler a Household Name?
A paradox lies at the core of Frederick Kiesler’s legacy. Over a career that spanned half a century, the protean and tireless architect, designer and theoretician actually built precious little. His most famous and, arguably, most radical design, the free-form pod-like “Endless House,” never yielded a satisfactory prototype, despite nearly 40 years of planning; few…
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