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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Film & TV
How Haskell Wexler Became the Epitome of Cool
Haskell Wexler had a deep knack for the cool — how else to achieve fame as a cinematographer? Name another — go on, I dare you. In a town that worships “the talent” over actual technical talent, Wexler’s work behind the camera stood out in Hollywood. And, even rarer, the man stood for something; he…
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How Debbie Reynolds Became the Perfect Jewish Mother
The witty, multitalented performer Debbie Reynolds, who died on December 28 at age 84, surprisingly found herself associated with Judaism both on- and off-screen. From celebrity notoriety as the decidedly non-Jewish spouse of Jewish singer Eddie Fisher, Reynolds survived her marriage’s breakup and went on be cast onscreen as Jewish or crypto-Jewish mothers in later…
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Why 2015 Was the Most Yiddish Year of All
For a supposedly dead or dying language, Yiddish is not going down without a fight. In fact, we’re in the midst of a rich and creative revival such that the language and its culture hasn’t seen in decades. Yiddish Studies programs are cropping up at the unlikeliest of colleges and universities across the United States….
The Latest
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5 Great Moments From Haskell Wexler’s Career
Haskell Wexler, one of the film world’s most gifted cinematographers, has died at the age of 93. A two-time Academy Award winner and three-time nominee for movies such as “Bound for Glory,” “Blaze” and “Matewan,” Wexler was born in 1922 to a Jewish family in Chicago where he befriended future influential publisher Barney Rosset and…
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The Unseen Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine
At Art Basel in Miami a few weeks ago, it rained a lot, and some critics scorned the commercial excess with extra sharpness. For Basel art in Washington on a recent morning, the sun lit the season’s last leaves and intimate galleries showed rarely seen paintings. A room devoted to Chaïm Soutine and Marc Chagall…
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Witness to the Prosecution of a Neo-Nazi in Germany
On November 21, 2015, the day that Marcel Zech decided to flaunt his Auschwitz tattoo in a spaßbad in Oranienburg, I had the misfortune of being there as well, together with my nine-year-old son. Seeing that tattoo took my breath away. It permanently shattered the illusion that I have been living under since I arrived…
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The Jew as Not-So-Other at Yiddish New York
“The Jew as Other” is a theme running throughout the programming of this weekend’s Yiddish New York festival, a first-time event intended to perpetuate the decades-old annual Christmas-week gathering in the Catskills of Yiddish newbies, wannabes, and experts that was KlezKamp, which had its final incarnation last December. You could say “The Jew as Other”…
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Books Is Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ Still Inflammatory or a Tool To Fight Hate — or Both?
BERLIN – For the first time since Hitler’s death, Germany is publishing the Nazi leader’s political treatise “Mein Kampf,” unleashing a highly charged row over whether the text is an inflammatory racist diatribe or a useful educational tool. The 70-year copyright on the text, written by Hitler between 1924-1926 and banned by the Allies at…
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Can a Dry Country Like Israel Quench the World’s Thirst?
Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World By Seth M. Siegel Thomas Dunne Books 352 Pages $27.99 Water: the sign of salvation, the portal to purity, the source of simcha. It is an inescapable part of Jewish practice, a recurring motif throughout the religious life of a Jew. Jews beseech God daily…
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A Close Encounter With Asia’s Anti-Semitic Capital
On a recent stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a cemented-over pile of ugly skyscrapers and canyons strewn with street beggars, I strolled through the garish Twin Towers Shopping Mall. In an underground supermarket, I passed an employee at the fish counter — a short, squat young man who stared at me with violent hatred. I…
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Yiddish Rep’s Controversial Take on Mideast Conflict
Asked if Mario Diament’s play “Land of Fire” seems almost quaint in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, New Yiddish Rep’s artistic director David Mandelbaum didn’t miss a beat. “The play has more resonance than ever,” he said. “There is a major distinction between an Islamic jihadist state and the valid aspirations of the Palestinians…
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
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