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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A Famous MoMA Painting Makes Its Way Home — 80 Years Later
Before World War II, Max Fischer, a German journalist and political thinker, inherited a vast assortment of paintings from his parents. He initially thought the Nazi occupation would pass, but it became increasingly harder for him to find work because he was a “non-Aryan,” and his income was dwindling. A month after the Nuremberg Laws…
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Art Is This an Anti-Semitic Sculpture or a Rorschach Test?
For five years a sculpture constructed with steel letters stood in a Milwaukee suburb, gathering some attention but no controversy — that is, until a visiting blogger from New Jersey saw it and declared there were antt-Semitic slurs embedded in the artwork. The result was an Internet fury, which culminated in the work quickly being…
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Amir Gutfreund, Writer of Wit and Power, Dies of Cancer at 52
I first met Amir Gutfreund at the Pierre Hotel in the spring of 2007. To inaugurate the biggest Jewish literary prize ever, in honor of multi-millionaire Sami Rohr, literati, journalists and organizers had been gathered to one of Manhattan’s glitziest hotels. Gutfreund’s firm no-nonsense manner and even firmer sense of the absurd was in full…
The Latest
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David Mamet’s American Snoozefest
“QUESTION: WHAT IS DRAMA?” When he was running the CBS series “The Unit,” the expert and expertly hectoring dramatist David Mamet a memo to his writers, complete with excessive capitalization and the occasional bolded phrase. “DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE…
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Jewish Latinos Get National Public Radio Spotlight
“There are these two worlds, the Jewish world and the Latino world, and we talk about them often like they’re two totally separate communities,” Michael Johnson said. “That’s not entirely true. There’s a middle part where they meet. There are all of these people who have very different experiences being both. We wanted to take…
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Books Al Franken Signs $1M Book Deal on Years in Congress
Sen. Al Franken signed a deal to write a non-fiction book about his years in Congress. The deal is for at least $1 million, the the Huffington Post reported, citing sources close to the process. Franken is a second-term Democratic senator from Minnesota and a former writer and performer on “Saturday Night Live.” He is…
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Music Mizrahi Music Gets Its Rock Star Moment
On the cover of Riff Cohen’s 2012 album, “A Paris,” there is a picture of her grandmother at age 14, wearing braids and a scowl. A teenage bride, her grandmother had taken the passport photo for her move from Djerba, Tunisia, to Israel. The image holds sentimental value for Cohen, but she also chose it…
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Caught Between the Yeshiva and the Deep Blue Sea
When I was in yeshiva, there was a man who had been in beit medrash every day since 1953. Yes, every day in the afternoon he came to study the holy books, without fail. He had started as a young boy, and by the time I was 20, he was in his 50s. He had…
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‘Transparent’ Is Back — and It’s as Good (and Jewish) as Ever
When we last left “Transparent’”s Pfefferman clan, they were scavenging the leftovers – chopped liver, coleslaw and maybe some whitefish salad– after a shiva. Now, at the start of the show’s second season — the first episode of which aired early on Amazon this week — we rejoin them at a wedding. The two events,…
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8 Nights, 16 Books: A Book Lover’s Guide to Hanukkah
The holidays are, among many other things, a time for reading and a time for schmaltz. The two, combined, give you a sentiment expressed by the beloved writer Neil Gaiman — whose books, by the way, make for excellent sit-down-and-read-it-in-a-night-as-the-snow-falls-outside fare — when he once said, “A book is a dream that you hold in…
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Ranking Woody Allen Lists on His 80th Birthday
In honor of Woody Allen’s 80th birthday, we thought we’d come up with a ranking of Allen’s movies. You know, all the way from #1 (Maybe “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or, say, “Stardust Memories” if you’re feeling contrarian) to #46 (how about “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” or “Melinda and Melinda” or “Brooklyn Jazz…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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News Middlebury College Hillel votes to rebrand, distancing from parent group on Israel
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Fast Forward Kristof column alleging Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners sparks outrage, scrutiny and debate among Jews
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Fast Forward From Rutgers speaker to Kristof column, disputed dog rape claim against Israel goes mainstream
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Fast Forward Rand Paul’s son apologizes after reportedly making antisemitic attack on Rep. Mike Lawler
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Fast Forward Long Island school district pays $125K to settle lawsuit over erased pro-Palestinian student art