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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Is ‘Lulu’ the Best Opera the Met Has Ever Staged?
William Kentridge’s new production of Alban Berg’s atonal opera “Lulu” is sordid, seductive, sadistic, scandalous and, as one of the characters quips in German, full of schmutz. It might be the best new production the Met has seen since Kentridge’s daring 2010 take on Shostakovich’s “The Nose.” “Lulu,” based on “Spring Awakening” author Franz Wedekind’s…
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Revisiting the Work of Yehuda Amichai, Israel’s Unofficial Poet Laureate
The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai Edited by Robert Alter Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 576 pages, $35 Among readers of the hugely popular Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (born Ludwig Pfeuffer, in Würzburg, Germany), perhaps the most acutely perceptive was the American poet Anthony Hecht. Reacting to Amichai’s “Open Closed Open”, included in the present collection, Hecht…
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‘Sorrow and the Pity’ Filmmaker Turns Lens to Palestinian Cause
(JTA) — Documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls is perhaps best known for his 1969 Academy Award-nominated film “The Sorrow and the Pity,” which raised questions of French collaboration during the Nazi occupation, along with his monumental 1988 biopic “Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie,” which explored the actions of the notorious Nazi as well…
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Film & TV A Jewish Newsman Takes the ‘Spotlight’
The film “Spotlight,” which chronicles The Boston’s Globe’s 2001 investigation into sexual abuse by priests in the city’s archdiocese, is about shake-ups and interlopers, about questioning beliefs and authority. These issues are raised by the film’s most powerful character, who receives a surprisingly small amount of screen time. Marty Baron, played by Liev Schreiber with…
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Is the Play ‘Bad Jews’ Bad for the Jews?
Joshua Harmon’s play “Bad Jews” has been packing the house at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago. The play premiered in October 2013 at the Roundabout in New York, and opened in London in January 2015. In Chicago, the play’s run has been extended seven times. Lean, well-written and punchy, the play has an intriguing…
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Music What 91-Year-Old ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Lyricist Taught Me About Love
As I walked into Mendy’s on 34th Street on a recent Friday night to attend a Shabbat dinner for the Broadway cast of “Fiddler on the Roof,” I felt relieved that I’d successfully avoided a run-in with my ex-boyfriend, who lives in the neighborhood. He ended our three-and-a-half-year relationship this past summer and began seeing…
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What Gloria Steinem’s Non-Jewish Mother Taught Her About Being Jewish
Gloria Steinem is traveling again. Actually, “again” might not be the right word. Gloria Steinem is traveling still. She’s been on the road for well over 40 years, speaking out about women’s and civil rights and about political causes. Her recent trips, though, have been, at least in part, to promote her new memoir, “My…
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Of Tattoos, Fords, Volkswagens and Arthur Godfrey
We Jews may be the elephants of religion — if not of politics. We have long, long memories (to wit, we are still fighting over Israel after thousands of years), though those memories may be attenuating through assimilation. I thought of that recently during the Volkswagen emissions scandal. I had never known a Jew who…
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War at MOMA, Literally and Figuratively
The first piece you see upon entering the new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, “Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War,” is a bronze sculpture situated alone in a brightly lit recess. In Maria Martins’s 1946 “The Impossible, III,” two cartoonish, squat bronze figures struggle to embrace. Human from the…
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Nina Simone, the Mayor of Jerusalem and Me
‘Are you Jewish?” Nina asked me. This was more the kind of question I tended to get from shabbos candle-toting Lubavitchers, not the great Miss Simone. But there she was, sitting close to me in her suite, getting personal. I answered with the truth, “Yes.” She leaned over the couch, and in a low conspiratorial…
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Film & TV How Jan Selby Found Peace in Documentaries
It’s 10 a.m. on a Friday morning, and Jan Selby finally slows down for breakfast. The 56-year-old, Minnesota-based filmmaker stops into the Starbucks across the street from her St. Paul office for an egg sandwich and coffee. “I’ve taken on a little much,” she says. “Between running a company and being involved in three major…
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