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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Your Jewish Nose Job Stories
In , published in the Forward last month, Naomi Zeveloff described the evolution of the procedure once considered a rite of passage for Jewish American teenage girls. **In the 1950s and ’60s, nose jobs were seen as a way to fit in. For the price of minor surgery, you could erase the main visible trace…
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Me and Patti Smith and Andy Warhol and 1970’s New York and Me
I remember New York in the 1970s. We were just kids. The city was on fire and we listened to vinyl. We lived in the Chelsea Hotel, all of us: me, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Ultra Violet, Shel Silverstein, Margot Kidder, Richard Pryor, Bianca Jagger, Roger Angell, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, George Plimpton…
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Mitzvah Accomplished
A few Octobers ago, I found myself in TriBeCa, ambling down Hudson Street. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I’d just gotten back from a three-day visit with my parents for Sukkot. Up ahead, I spotted two Lubavitcher teenagers, smiling and eager, green lulavim gripped in their fists like Jedi swords. I slowed and squinted…
The Latest
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How a Jewish Woman and a Kenyan Man Are Trying To Save the World Together
‘It’s powerful to share a dream together,” Jessica Posner said, holding hands loosely with her husband, Kennedy Odede. The couple are the co-founders of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). It’s a not-for-profit organization that provides social services in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. Located in Nairobi, Kibera is home to hundreds of thousands of people, the…
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Dennis Ross and His Perilous Balancing Act on Israel
Doomed To Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship From Truman to Obama By Dennis Ross Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 496 Pages, $30 Israel: Is it good for the Americans? According to Dennis Ross, who has served as a Middle East negotiator or consultant, or both, in four administrations, including the current one, this is a question that…
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Still Life With Chicken: A Writer’s Journey
August 1985 Dusk falls in Iowa. I sit around the back-porch table with Tobias Wolff, Geoffrey Wolff, Lazar Wolf, Wolf Blitzer, Richard Brautigan, Leonard Michaels, and Gordon Lish, all my mentors. The pages of my first workshop short story sit in front of them. They all stare at me, mouth agape, near-tears, except for Lish,…
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Film & TV Sarah Silverman’s New Movie Is a Safari of Despair
If you’ve never felt deep depression or anxiety, “I Smile Back” is like a safari of despair. To your left, you will see a woman falling apart on the bathroom floor, to your right, a son suffering from anxiety, a family falling apart. Behind and ahead are daddy issues, drug addiction. Reckless and joyless sex…
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Art Have These Jewish Ghosts Been Haunting New York?
It’s surprisingly difficult to pinpoint the Jewish ghosts and haunts of New York. Although museum directors and tour guides rack their brains, they often end up stumped. Google searches on “Jewish ghosts New York City” yield no results. Of course, spirits usually seem to be disembodiments of famous figures. Some died tragically of disease, others…
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Geraldine Brooks Reimagines King David — for Better and Worse
The Secret Chord By Geraldine Brooks Viking, 320 pages, $27.95 Musician and warrior, shepherd and poet, anointed of God and guilt-ridden sinner, the biblical King David is a compelling and contradictory figure. In her latest work of historical fiction, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks (“March,” “People of the Book,” “Caleb’s Crossing”) heightens those contradictions,…
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Is ‘City On Fire’ Too Big To Fail?
City on Fire By Garth Risk Hallberg Knopf, 944 pages, $18 It may not be possible to speak of Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut novel, “City on Fire,” without mentioning a few numbers. So here goes: The book’s 944 pages include some facsimile interludes and reproductions of fanzines, letters and typewritten, booze-stained long-form reportage, all ostensibly…
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How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Became ‘Notorious’
What do a deceased East Coast rapper and a petite Jewish Supreme Court justice have in common? They’re both Notorious. Over the past few years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been enjoying an unlikely pop culture moment. “Notorious RBG,” the Tumblr account created by NYU law student Shana Knizhnik comparing Ginsburg to rapper Biggie Smalls (aka…
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