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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Art
In Chicago, All Roads Led to Lois Weisberg
A New Yorker profile written by Malcolm Gladwell in 1999 made Lois Weisberg, Chicago’s commissioner of cultural affairs, famous because, Gladwell wrote, she was among those “who make the world work.” Weisberg appeared in Gladwell’s best-selling book “The Tipping Point,” largely because of her facility with viral networking and her dedication to all kinds of…
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Jews of the Caribbean
A relatively small number of Jews have lived in the Caribbean since the time of the Spanish Expulsion in 1492. As refugees from fascist Europe in the 1930s and ’40s, they formed what has been called a Calypso shtetl. A new study from Columbia University Press, “Calypso Jews,” investigates how contemporary Caribbean authors have been…
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Bernie Has His ‘Sanderswitzky’ Moment on ‘SNL’ With Larry David
Bernie Sanders had a rumpled star turn on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ teaming up with frequent portrayor Larry David to gent mocked his leftist campaign message — and Jewish roots In one skit, David and Sanders are stuck on a sinking ship filled with Jewish immigrants from the Old Country. David’s character tries to use his…
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When Swimming Felt Like Prayer
Stepping into the lobby induces an overpowering sensory flashback: the distinctive metallic jags of Jewish synagogue art (where does that aesthetic come from, anyway?); the memorial flame flanked by chirpy fliers for simcha-space rentals and family services; the dim overhead lighting; the musty smell of carpeting and old books; the quiet, punctured only by the…
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How Jews Found ‘Promised Land’ by Being British
Their Promised Land: My GrandParents in Love and war By Ian Buruma Penguin Press, 320 Pages, $27 Can one be both Jewish and British, or must one identity subsume the other? The critic and historian Ian Buruma tackles that perennially vexing question in “Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War,” his recently published…
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Bernard Werber Sees a Sci-Fi Future — and It’s All About Ants
In a series of best-selling novels about ants, miniature human beings and other creatures, the French Jewish author Bernard Werber has won millions of readers worldwide with what he calls philosophy-fiction. Blending science fiction, whodunits, spirituality, biology and mythology, his latest work, “The Sixth Sleep,” was published. Recently, the Forward’s Benjamin Ivry spoke with Werber…
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Film & TV Coen Bros Make Fun of Religion, Politics and Hollywood in ‘Hail, Caesar!’
To the Coen Brothers, we are all fools. Jut take a look at their characters: There’s the pretentious and deluded playwright Barton Fink in “Barton Fink”; hard-luck schlemiels like Larry Gopnik (“A Serious Man”) and Llewyn Davis (“Inside Llewyn Davis”); and entire casts of nitwits in movies such as “Raising Arizona,” “O Brother Where Art…
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Bernie Madoff’s Juicy Scandal Turns Into Worst TV Snoozefest Ever
When a middle-aged sexpot with a Long Island accent introduces herself to Bernie Madoff outside the bathroom at Elie Wiesel’s house, one hour into ABC’s four-hour based-on-a-true-story miniseries, it marks first time in the history of network television that the phrase “CFO of Hadassah” has been employed as a pickup line. “Sheryl Weinstein, CFO of…
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Rabbis Get Into Super Bowl Trash Talking With ‘Mitzvah Bowl’
Two reform rabbis have started their own Super Bowl rivalry in the name of tzedakah, complete with amped-up videos and friendly taunting like calling the Panthers the Kitty Cats. Rabbi Judith Schindler of Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina and Rabbi Joe Black at Temple Emanuel in Denver, Colorado have set up a joint…
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How a 96-Year-Old Limerick Master Became a New York Times Top Commenter
In a dim third-floor apartment on East 88th Street in Manhattan, strewn with potted plants, unopened mail and bronze statuettes, 96-year-old Larry Eisenberg writes limericks on the MacBook Air his children bought him and posts them in the comments sections on The New York Times’ website. Sometimes he can be politically pointed and sassy, showing…
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Film & TV How a Holocaust Film Earned Jacques Rivette’s Deepest Contempt
With the death last week of Jacques Rivette, a certain idea of French cinema took one step closer to death. Along with François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais, Rivette was one of the enfants terribles of the so-called Nouvelle Vague, or New Wave. Rebelling against the reign of studios and what they scorned as…
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