Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
For this author, 'The Apprentice' is a chillingly accurate film that hits way too close to home
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‘MikiLeaks’ Reveals New NSA Spying Scandal
Rabbi Barry Freundel, who has pled guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, has revealed that he was recruited as part of a government surveillance program called “MikiLeaks.” The program, run by the National Security Agency, targeted Jewish ritual baths, known as mikvehs, to collect evidence of individuals peeing in the mikveh. Freundel’s claims were backed…
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Rabbi Freundel’s 8 Reasons There Should Be an Alarm Clock in The Mikveh
1) To distract from the dripping tap. 2) So that mikveh dippers can time themselves to make sure they don’t take too long to get naked. 3) To make the changing room reassuringly haimish, like a bedroom. 4) Really? A practice dunk is totally normal but having a clock in there is the weird part?…
The Latest
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Dying to Party: Top Celebs Reveal Funeral Plans
Joan Rivers, who died in September 2014, had her funeral all planned out in her autobiography. “I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action… I want craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene. I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t…
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Jewish Teen Literally Vanishes During Latest Pew Research Study
Sixteen-year-old Justin Cohen disappeared during a follow-up interview to the 2013 landmark Pew Research Center’s survey of American Jews. Pew researcher Stephen Ipsell, who conducted the interview, said this is the first time a subject has dematerialized in the middle of a 45-minute session. “I noticed some fading around the edges around 10 minutes in…
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What We’re Not Naming Our Kids
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In Compromise, Bibi Addresses 9th Grade Model Congress in Suburban Illinois
Thanks to a last-ditch solution that both saved face for the Israeli leader and avoided a confrontation with the Obama administration for at least three and a half more weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replaced his planned address to Congress with a speech to the Model Congress at Glencampbell High. On Tuesday afternoon, the…
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The Amazing Grace of Leonard Nimoy
I often called him Leib, his Yiddish name, picking up on the term of endearment used by his wife, Susan. We were friends for more than 25 years, the trailing spouses of the even longer friendship between our wives. I was not a Trekkie (or Trekker, to use the term Leonard preferred). I didn’t watch…
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Of Rosanne Barr, King David Kalakaua and 9 Other Things About Jewish Hawaii
1) Seven thousand two hundred and eighty Jews live in Hawaii. 2) One of the earliest documented appearances of a Jew in the Hawaiian islands occurred in 1798, when a sailor named Ebenezer Townsend, Jr. recorded that the Hawaiian king came aboard a whaling ship with a cook belonging to the Mosaic faith. 3) Jewish…
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Cancer-Stricken Israeli Playwright Finds Comedy in Disease
Producer Daniel Krupnik and his wife, translator Hilla Bar, first encountered “Happy Ending”in April 2014, when they saw a photograph in an Israeli newspaper accompanying an article about Anat Gov’s musical play. The picture depicted a woman dancing hand-in-hand with a man dressed as a crab. Not long afterwards, they decided to translate and adapt…
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Irving Kahn, Oldest Money Manager, Dies at 109
Irving Kahn, the American Jewish money manager who died on Thursday, February 26, at age the age of 109, was more than just the oldest living investment professional, as he was often dubbed. Kahn exemplified a work ethic which stressed ever-fresh intellectual interests as a way to remain young in spirit. Always on the lookout…
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The Occupations and Preoccupations of Arkadi Zaides
In the video clip, a Jewish boy of no more than 12, seemingly drunk on Purim wine and missing a shoe, kicks and slaps the exterior of a Palestinian home in Hebron. A man in a kippah, perhaps the boy’s father, appears and drags the boy away. The man turns to a soldier off camera…
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Opinion I’m a Jew of color. Ta-Nehisi Coates can’t apply US lessons to Israel.
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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Sports 5 Jewish things about the Mets — and why Jewish fans adore them
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