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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What If the Nazis Won — or If They Lost?
In October 2015, The New York Times Magazine conducted a poll on Twitter, asking its readers, “Could you kill a baby Hitler?” The question unleashed a flood of think pieces parsing the ethics of such an act, and a response from then-Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who said without hesitation, “Hell, yeah, I would.” Ultimately,…
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How Morley Safer’s Jewish Upbringing Inspired His Quest for Decency and Justice
The Canadian Jewish broadcast journalist Morley Safer, who died at age 84 on May 19, was as much preoccupied with ethics and the arts as reporting during his more than a half-century with CBS News, 46 of them with the program “60 Minutes.” He told Abigail Pogrebin, author of “Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk…
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Why in the World Did Anthony Let Them Film ‘Weiner!’
In the movie “Weiner,” former U.S. congressman Anthony Weiner displays the proper reluctance that’s supposed to mark the beginning of a hero’s journey. “This is the worst,” he says into the camera in the opening shot of the film. “I don’t know why I let them film me,” he tells a voter from atop a…
The Latest
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Meet New York’s Torah Truck King
I found Rabbi Shulem Korn in Queens as he was assembling one of his famous Torah Trucks. A white pickup was hooked to an ornately decorated trailer, a dramatic scene of Mount Sinai, surrounded by lightening, emblazoned on the side. I’d been trying to track down the rabbi for months, celebrated in New York for…
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Why Interviewing Sandy Koufax Made This Writer More Nervous Than Ever Before
Sportswriter Jeff Passan is long past the stage in his career when he feels anxious at the prospect of interviewing a famous athlete. But Sandy Koufax was different. It was a bucket list moment for Passan, the lead baseball writer for Yahoo Sports. A part of him felt as if he was back in Hebrew…
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Finding Beauty in ‘Indecent’ — a 110-Year-Old Play Set in Jewish Brothel
Indecent By Paula Vogel Created by Paula Vogel & Rebecca Taichman Directed by Rebecca Taichman Music composed by Lisa Gutkin & Aaron Halva From the moment of its inception in 1906, Yiddish writer Sholem Asch’s play “God of Vengeance” was an object of controversy. Set in a Jewish brothel, the plot revolves around a love…
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Film & TV Last Surviving ‘Casablanca’ Actor Dies — Along With a Slice of Jewish History
When Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving actress from the film “Casablanca” (1942) died earlier this month at age 92, she took with her more than film history. Her screen role as Yvonne, Humphrey Bogart’s discarded mistress, was twinned with her real-life role as the wife of French Jewish actor Marcel Dalio (1899–1983). Dalio was born…
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Once an Obscene Scandal, a Hit Yiddish Play Returns 93 Years Later
The opening of “Indecent,” a new play by Paula Vogel co-created with director Rebecca Taichman, is reminiscent of the scene in “Inception” in which Leonardo DiCaprio takes Ellen Page through the basics of dream architecture. He escorts her through an initially recognizable world that begins inverting and contorting itself, resulting in a dreamscape created less…
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Music Did George Gershwin Plagiarize From Broadway’s ‘Shuffle Along?’
“Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921,” the Broadway show starring Audra McDonald, opened on April 28. Its book by George C. Wolfe purports to explain how the African-American songwriter Eubie Blake encountered difficulties along the way to producing a show, “Shuffle Along,” nearly a century ago. One of the key…
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Inspiring Rabbis: For Rabbi Darby Leigh, Growing Up Deaf Taught Jewish Inclusiveness
Rabbi Darby Leigh is one of this year’s “Inspiring Rabbis,” a group of 32 men and women who move us, and moved a congregant or colleague to nominate them for our annual roundup of spiritual leaders. Find the other 31 here. When he was growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago There has been quite a lot of talk recently about the suffering of the Jews in Russia as a result of the current war. There is also, however, a different type of Jew about whom there is much less discussion. This would be the Jewish soldier. What is it like for…
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