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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Chanan Tigay’s Mad Search for the World’s Oldest Bible
The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible By Chanan Tigay Ecco, 368 pages, $27.99 Before Bedouins discovered the first Dead Sea Scrolls, in 1947 in a cave near the Dead Sea, another ancient manuscript briefly enraptured the archaeological community and promised to transform biblical scholarship. The find in question was…
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Music A Jewish Tribute to Prince, Holy Unifier of Spirit and Sex
We get older when those we love — first parents, then peers and friends — pass away. Death becomes real, not an abstraction. Not only can it happen anytime; it does happen anytime. I think that’s true when celebrities pass also. This year, Prince and David Bowie; not long ago, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston….
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Setting Aside a Moment for the Uprising
Because the first night of Passover in 1943 was also the first night of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, many Seder observers set time aside the first night to commemorate its heroic martyrs. Although it’s a tradition that has passed out of fashion, it still remains strong within the Yiddish community. As we celebrate a festival…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago The Jewish quarter of Bayonne, New Jersey, is reeling after a scandalous episode occurred in which a Jewish landlord evicted an elderly couple on the first day of the Passover holiday. The couple, who have lived in the house at 88 W. 18th St. in Bayonne for nearly two years, have…
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Confessions of a Haggadah Hoarder
You can see life in all sorts of ways — in photos, through journals, in stories told and memories shared. But I can see mine in a large plastic storage box in my basement. There it is, on the floor behind the furnace: my life in Passover Haggadot. Did I say one bin? I meant…
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This Is How You Don’t Write an Obituary For Prince
This is the part where you first read the news. This is the part where you still think it might be a hoax. This is the part where you learn that it isn’t. This is the part where you recall where you first became aware of his music — in a friend’s family home in…
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3 Ways To Honor Harriet Tubman on Passover
Giving into popular, “Hamilton”-loving demand, the Treasury Department has announced that instead of replacing Alexander Hamilton with a woman on the $10 bill, they’ll be making room by knocking Andrew Jackson off the $20. And their choice to replace him? Harriet Tubman. The announcement was met with mixed responses. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew initially promised…
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Enter David Duchovny’s (Half) Jewish New York, Through His New Novel
For both David Duchovny and the protagonist of his latest novel, “Bucky F*cking Dent” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) literary talent runs in the family. The “X-Files” actor and late-blooming musician is the descendant of several generations New York writers. The son of a Jewish father and a Scottish mother, he grew up in the East…
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Film & TV For Ronit Elkabetz, Being Human Was the Only Option
The Israeli actress and director Ronit Elkabetz, who died on April 19 at age 51, was noted for her masterful portrayal of tragic figures with few or no exit options. Yet in life she retained powerful optimism about the restorative value of drama for bringing people closer together. When she died prematurely of cancer, leaving…
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Film & TV Film About Streit’s Debuts As The Factory Is Demolished
Last spring when Michael Levine, the filmmaker of “Streit’s: Matzo and the American Dream” was in the final days of editing and had already shipped a copy off to film festivals, he received word from the Streit family that the factory he had been documenting over the past two years was closing and moving to…
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Why This Is An Off Year for New Haggadot — and That’s Not a Bad Thing
Just a few years ago, my annual review of new Haggadahs marveled at the novelty of a Haggadah app, a DIY Haggadah website, and other new-media ways in which 21st century Jews were remixing this 3rd century hodgepodge of texts. Now, as with new media and old media in general, the novelties have taken over….
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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