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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‘Son of Saul’ Captures Intense Brutality of Auschwitz
The most iconic face of this year’s Cannes Film Festival did not belong to Emma Stone or to Cate Blanchett, — to mention two celebrities who walked the red carpet — nor to Ingrid Bergman, whose silver image graced the festival’s banners and posters; it was the sunken, haunted face of Geza Röhrig the 48-year-old…
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Film & TV How an Orthodox 6-Year-Old Became the Star of ‘Hotel Transylvania 2’
When five-year-old Asher Blinkoff strode off into the audition room, his father, Saul, was a little nervous. An old pro of the movie industry, Saul has directed several films himself and worked for Walt Disney Animation Studios before that. He knew what to expect, but to leave his son in a room full of strangers…
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The Secret Jewish History of Joni Mitchell
Last spring, obituary writers were scrambling when reports began surfacing that Joni Mitchell was knockin’ on heaven’s door. Rumors had the folk-rock poet lying on the floor at home for days before someone found her either unconscious, in a medically induced coma and near death, or out of a coma but paralyzed and unable to…
The Latest
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How Peggy Guggenheim Re-Invented Modernism
Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern By Francine Prose Yale University Press, 240 pages, $25 I feel compelled to begin my review of the novelist Francine Prose’s biography of art dealer and collector Peggy Guggenheim with a lengthy quote from another writer, in this case the Russian playwright Vladimir Sorokin, who wrote about Guggenheim…
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Why Glaciers Are the Most Jewish Geological Formation — and Other Lessons From Alaska
The glaciers in Alaska are a natural wonder to behold. I ‘ve been spending some days around them (via boats) and over them (via float planes). They remind me, funnily enough, of the Bible and its story of what the world looked like before God populated the earth with some Jews, some anti-Semites and everyone…
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An Unexpected Yom Kippur in Bangkok
I was the only American in the room and definitely the most clueless. Standing at the back of the makeshift shul for Yom Kippur services in Chabad of Bangkok, I attempted to follow along in my Hebrew siddur pamphlet, observing other people in the room and trying to peep through the mechitza just to know…
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How the Pontiff Welcomes in Yontef
Shalom, good yontef, good yontef, good yontef, namaste, y’all. I am the pope, the literal representative of the Lord on Earth. Please be seated. Put away your selfie sticks. This is serious business. Before I begin my sermon, I just have to ask: How do you rabbis do it? If I had to offer biblical…
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How Surviving Solitary Confinement Changed My Life
From the look on her face, and the way she entered my room, I knew my mother was about to say something serious. Leaning against her walker, she watched me move closer to her. “It will be harder for you to be in prison than it was for me to be in a concentration camp,”…
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The Story My Bubbe Told Us
I can’t remember the exact moment when I realized there was a lot more to my Bubbe’s story than a grandmother who baked amazing chocolate chip cookies and spent her winters in Florida. Her past wasn’t really discussed openly, and it wasn’t until after my bat mitzvah that I started to really understand what she…
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The Most Jewish Crocodile in New York
On the sidewalks leading up to the National Museum of American Jewish History, located mere steps from Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, green reptilian footprints lead the way to the exhibit “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile and Friends: The Art of Bernard Waber.” Ilana Blumenthal, the museum’s marketing and communications manager, conceived of the footprints to promote the show,…
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Theo Bikel, Prophet of His People
In Deuteronomy 18:18 Moses says that God has told him, “I will raise up a prophet from among your own people. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to the people all that I command him.” Theo Bikel, who passed away July 21, was, I believe, such a prophet in…
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