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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Looking Back at ‘The Bridge’ and Germany’s Lost Generation
If movies have taught us anything, it’s that the legacy of World War II is many times bigger and more varied than we thought – no matter what we had thought. Each year, documentaries are unleashed that limn another heretofore dark corner of the Holocaust, or the Jewish refugee experience, or an ambiguous Nazi pathology,…
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Remembering Britain’s ‘Schindler,’ Nicholas Winton
Nicholas Winton, who has died at the age of 106, exemplifies the fact that to do good deeds, years of preparation are not necessary. Effective humanitarian action can be impromptu and seemingly random in origin. Born Nicholas Wertheimer in London in 1909 to German Jewish parents, Winton was a young stockbroker in 1938, planning his…
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Film & TV How Do You Talk God Out of The Apocalypse? Ask Eli Shapiro.
Jewish humor is safe, even in these modern times. Writer/director Eli Shapiro, a young New Jerseyite living in the Big City, is upholding the tradition of somewhat cynical, yet utterly thoughtful social commentary in the name of comedy: his recent short film, “Ike Interviews God,” portrays a wholly average insurance clerk in conversation with an…
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My Hunt for the Big Jew of the Cumberland Gap
On my second day in Eastern Kentucky, I ate an Arby’s roast beef sandwich that tasted like a wet brown paper towel. That was lunch on the trail of the long-dead nightclub owner they called the Big Jew. The Big Jew used to have a dancehall near the Cumberland Gap, with slot machines and liquor…
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Seeking My Sweet Spot — Six Feet Under
I recently bought my grave because my wife, 10 years my junior and exceedingly practical, has been urging me to decide what I want concerning my ultimate disposal. Debbie has not failed to notice, as I approach my 70th birthday, that time may be nigh. She prefers I be cremated, but I have been insistent…
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Why Are These Secular Kids Learning Yiddish?
If you visit Brooklyn’s Middle School 88 late on a Wednesday afternoon, you’ll witness something pretty unusual. The building sits on the southern edge of Park Slope, down the block from Green-Wood Cemetery and next to the noisy Prospect Expressway. Huddling around a table in a science classroom a handful of kids are studying Yiddish….
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Still Tickling the Ivories at 99 — and Counting
“It’s almost my birthday!” Irving Fields announces, no sooner have I arrived at the doorstep of his Midtown apartment. He gleefully declares that he will be turning “100 years young” in a couple of weeks and then promptly invites us to his birthday party. And so begins my afternoon with Fields, a pianist who has…
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Game Night With Your Cousin A.J. Jacobs
Julie Jacobs, 46, is the sales and business development director at . Her husband, A.J. Jacobs, 46, is a writer of books, one of which is “The Year of Living Biblically.” The two have been living together since 1999 and reside on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with their three sons: Jasper, 11, and…
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Art Miriam Schapiro Married Judaism and Feminism in Her Art
Toronto-born Miriam Schapiro, who died on Saturday, June 20, at the age of 91, proved that an ardent feminist can also be a joyous artist. Born in 1923 to Russian Jewish parents, Fannie Cohen and Theodore Schapiro, she had a rich and varied imagination, as described in Thalia Gouma-Peterson’s “Miriam Schapiro” from Harry N. Abrams…
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A Poor Father Forced to Sell Daughter for $1
100 Years Ago In an office on Rivington Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at which farms are usually bought and sold, a poor father from the Bronx came in and sold his 5-year old daughter to a childless couple, Morris and Rebecca Green. The Greens, who emigrated from Odessa, have been married for 12…
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Which Side Were We On? Kentucky Slavery, Mine Wars and Segregation
1. Bat Shit on the Cave Floor In a forest in Kentucky there’s a hole in the ground that was once full of bat shit. The bats are mostly gone now. A bat plague hit here last year, and when you follow the sloping sidewalk down into the hole today, you step into a silent…
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