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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Music
How Kenny Schaffer Became the Father of Invention
‘A lot of things are invented by people looking for money,” says Kenny Schaffer. “Many people say I should be a billionaire many times over, but it doesn’t matter to me. I go for ideas that stimulate or excite me. It’s not the American way of doing business, but I’ve been able to eke out…
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6 Artists You Didn’t Know Used Yiddish, From Elvis to Public Enemy
It’s astounding how much Yiddish has infiltrated today’s popular culture. From classic musicals like “Fiddler on the Roof” to sitcoms like Seinfeld, some words and phrases of Ashkenazi Jews’ native tongue have become Americanized, naturalized, and sometimes clichéd. So, when Public Enemy released its latest album, “Man Plans, God Laughs,” emblazoned with , we decided…
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Music The Life and Timeline of George Wein
1925: George Theodore Wein is born on October 3 in Lynn, Massachusetts. 1930s: Wein grows up in the heavily Jewish suburb of Newton, where, as he would later write, “the children… were spared the discrimination that had plagued earlier generations.” But this didn’t necessarily mean his family was particularly observant. He remembers seeing his father,…
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Remembering Theo Bikel, a Fighter to the End
Theodore Bikel, who has died at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, was a shtarker, unlike many showbiz stars who merely play shtarkers on TV or onscreen. The barrel-chested, booming-voiced actor and singer had talent and stamina, the kind that allowed him to play Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” over 2000 times. After…
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‘Fiddler on The Roof’ Shtetl To Become Real-Life Refuge For Ukraine’s Jews
(JTA) — The Jewish refugee village of Anatevka, Ukraine, is so new it doesn’t even officially exist yet. Due to open in September, Anatevka Jewish Refugee Community hadn’t received much Jewish-media attention until last week, when its developers began raising funds for the $6 million project — designed for Ukrainian Jews displaced by the war ravaging…
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Together in San Francisco
Mark Pressler, 58, works as a human resources manager for The Gap. Robert Tannenbaum, 49, works as a network designer for UC San Francisco. They live in the Mission District neighborhood of San Francisco with their Maine coon kitten, Harry. They have been living together for three years and have been married for two. FORWARD:…
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Film & TV Filmmaker Takes Orthodox Masturbation Into His Own Hands
How does a Haredi father educate his young son about masturbation? This difficult question forms the basis of Israeli filmmaker Ori Gruder’s extraordinary documentary, “Sacred Sperm.” The film, made with the support of the Israeli television station HOT-Channel 8 with world sales handled by Go2Films, is aimed at a secular audience. It has received numerous…
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Music George Wein Remembers Newport — 50 Years After Bob Dylan Went Electric
George Wein, co-founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, once wrote, “If there was ever an average middle-class, Jewish-American kid… I was it.” But the life that followed Wein’s childhood in the Boston suburbs has been anything but commonplace. Consider a few facts: As a teenager who hungrily sought out live jazz, Wein sometimes brought musicians…
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Tuvia Ruebner, a Poet of Tragedy and Dissent
In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner By Tuvia Ruebner, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back Hebrew Union College/University of Pittsburgh Press, 396 pages, $39.95 Tuvia Ruebner is a poet’s poet. Though distinguished and admired in Hebrew and German literary circles, and despite having publishing 15 books of poetry in Hebrew, he was little…
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I Am a Fugitive From a Catholic School
Soviet kids had it bad upon immigration. My fellow Soviet refugees and good friends were sent by their well-intentioned parents to a yeshiva, only to be circumcised at the tender age of 12 (Soviet Jews didn’t circumcise their kids because of military hazing). Welcome to the 12 tribes of Israel, boys. Their parents handed them…
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The Many Selves of Yoel Hoffman
Moods By Yoel Hoffmann Translated by Peter Cole New Directions, 160 pages, $15.95 One is tempted to call Yoel Hoffmann’s “Moods” a poetic novel or a novel-as-poem, as his books have been called before. What this means is a little more difficult to say. The book resists description; it rewards slow reading instead. It has…
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