Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Music At 50, Israel Museum Looks to Local Artists
Mira Lapidot, 44, has risen through the ranks of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, starting her career 16 years ago as a guide and, in the past three years, serving as chief curator of the fine arts wing. Yet at that moment of personal achievement she and her team were already planning what they knew…
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Chilly Scenes of Cleveland Synagogues
● Congregation By Raphael Silver AuthorHouse, 412 pages, $23.95 Over the course of his 83 years, Raphael Silver was many things: real estate developer; film producer, director, writer and distributor; climber of Mount Kilimanjaro at age 73; indefatigable collector of objects; and finally, at the end of his life, author of a novel, “Congregation.” Silver…
The Latest
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10 Things About (Jewish) Arizona
1) 106,300 Jews live in Arizona. 2) Arizona’s first known Jewish resident was Dr. Herman Bendell who, in 1870, was nominated to be the state’s first Superintendent of Indian Affairs. 3) Since there were few women in the Arizona territory, early Jewish settlers traveled elsewhere to find wives. In 1884, 21 of these brides founded…
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The Art of Laurie Simmons Directly Challenges the Viewer
First I notice each model’s eyebrows. They are fluffy and coiffed into perfect, thick, modern arches as if ripped from this month’s glossy fashion magazines. And then below, eyes with wide-open pupils stare intensely at nothing, as if I don’t exist. I feel my reality challenged. And even more so since the eyes themselves are…
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Fear, Trembling and Madness After Bibi’s Re-Election
I’m in Tel Aviv. I love Tel Aviv. Who doesn’t? I’m in a boutique hotel on Gordon Street, facing the Gordon Beach, and I’m ready for breakfast. “What would you like to order?” asks the waiter. I like the waiters at this hotel. They are young and handsome, they look intellectual, and all of them…
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Daniel Weiss Calls Metropolitan Museum Job Running the ‘Yankees’ of Art
Visiting the Memorial de Caen museum in Normandy, France, in 1996, Daniel Weiss was captivated by eight photographs showing the public hanging of three partisans in Minsk, Belarus, on Oct. 26, 1941. The two male victims’ identities were known, but the female was anonymous, and Weiss set out to learn who she was. By the…
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Anatomy of the Murderers
● The Third Reich in History and Memory By Richard J. Evans Oxford University Press, 496 pages, $29.95 However deranged his deeds, Adolf Hitler was not certifiably mad. The German people did not voluntarily embrace the dictator, but acquiesced in his rule only after a campaign of terror that silenced or sidelined the political opposition….
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‘Felix and Meira’ Reaches Into a Cloistered World — and Beyond
Five years ago, at the Sunshine Cinema in Manhattan, I saw the worst movie about Hasidim ever made. “Holy Rollers,” a tale of Brooklyn boychiks gone bad, starred Jesse Eisenberg as Sam Gold, an innocent young thing who gets sucked into the ecstasy smuggling business. The plot was based on a true story, but the…
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Cut and Paste Your Ancestors
In need of Jewish ancestors? Liana Finck has some for you — just cut out and display! CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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Music Stanford Student Slams ‘Anti-Semitic’ Question About Jewish Faith
(j weekly via JTA) — A junior at Stanford University who is running for the student senate says she faced anti-Semitic questioning from a student group whose endorsement she was seeking. During a March 13 interview in front of eight members of the university’s Students of Color Coalition, Molly Horwitz, 21, alleges that the lead interviewer…
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Heard the One About the Jewish Musical That’s Better Than You’d Think?
Have you heard the one about the Jewish mother so bulldozing that her husband and daughters try hard to stay out of her path? About the Jewish father proud at his daughter’s wedding, but mostly because of the great deal he got on the banquet hall? About the Waspy machetayneste-to-be who sips gin at breakfast,…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish טשיקאַוועסן: 9 ייִדן פּרוּוון אַרײַנגנבֿענען ציג פֿאַר אַ קרבן אויפֿן הר־הביתTidbits: 9 Jews try to smuggle sacrificial goat onto Temple Mount
דאָס ציגעלע האָבן זיי באַהאַלטן אין אַן אײַנקויף־זאַק.
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Fast Forward ‘A Shonda’: Eric Adams and Brad Lander trade blows in bitter feud over antisemitism in NYC mayoral race
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Fast Forward South Africa’s chief rabbi supports Donald Trump — but says his refugee program for Afrikaners is a ‘mistake’
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Sports ‘All my homies hate paintball Nazis’: Antisemitism scandal tears through paintball community
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