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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Lisette Garcia, a Freedom Fighter for Information
Few people speak the language of government transparency more fluently than Lisette Garcia. When she was growing up as the daughter of Cuban exiles in Miami, she says, the idea of “the government sort of owning all the information” was ever present. She later became a reporter for the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star and…
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The True Story of Harry Houdini’s Tefillin
In a recent New York Times Magazine profile, Laura Hillenbrand, the best-selling author of “Seabiscuit” and “Unbroken,” revealed that she actually buys old newspapers to do her research. This allows her to see some of the other stories that were occurring at the same time. Hillenbrand hits on one of the surprising joys of what…
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The Latin Lothario Who Wasn’t (But He Was Jewish)
Ricardo Cortez is an enigma. The little-known golden age movie star was my distant cousin, though I never knew him. With his big eyes, aquiline nose and olive skin, Cortez resembled my late grandfather Alan. Alan never talked much about Ricardo, except to mention now and again that he had a cousin in Hollywood. But…
The Latest
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Europe Anti-Semitism Literally Carved in Stone
(JTA) — Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is among the most visited sites on the planet and a splendid example of Gothic architecture. Each year, millions flock to admire and photograph its flying buttresses and statuary, yet few take any real notice of two prominent female statues on either side of the main…
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I Survived Teaching Jewish Studies in North Carolina
I teach Jewish history in North Carolina, a land haunted by Jesus Christ. It is a land where the present is the biblical past. It is a land where the Second Coming is apparently coming any moment now. It is a land where devout Christians are eager to share the good news. It is a…
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Maybe All Happy Short Story Collections Aren’t Alike
● Happy Are the Happy By Yasmina Reza Other Press, 160 pages, $20 Yasmina Reza’s specialty is the excavation of long-simmering violence from underneath placid bourgeois surfaces. In her two best-known plays, the Tony-winning “Art” and “The God of Carnage,” the French-Jewish writer shows, to great comic effect, how quickly respectability gives way to offense….
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The Rocky Rise of J Street
There’s no doubt that J Street has shaken up American Jewry. Since its inception in 2008 as a lobby, political action committee, educational group and student movement, the organization has disrupted the debate about what it means to be pro-Israel. Now a new documentary, “J Street: The Art of the Possible,” produced and directed by…
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Of Howard Cosell, Cecil De Mille and 10 Other Jewish Facts About North Carolina
1) 32,075 Jews live in North Carolina. 2) Joachim Ganz, a Czech metallurgist, arrived in North Carolina in 1585, making him not only the first Jewish settler in the state but in any British colony. 3) Prussian-born merchant Samuel Wittkowski ran a store in Charlotte and was honored for his loyalty to North Carolina governor…
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Madeleine Kunin Never Felt Anti-Semitism in Vermont — but Switzerland Was Different Story
The only whiff of anti-Semitism that I experienced during my campaign for governor of Vermont took the form of a reporter’s question. He asked my campaign manager Liz Bankowski: “How are you going to deal with Madeleine Kunin’s liabilities?” “What liabilities?” Liz asked. “Well, she’s a woman, a democrat and she’s Jewish.” Liz thought for…
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How Wendy Wasserstein and Heidi Holland Remade the World
tk “It’s just that I feel stranded,” says Heidi Holland, standing alone on stage, delivering a frustrated, funny speech about her life and its discontents. It’s 1986, she’s nearing 40, and she’s addressing an alumnae gathering of her all-girls high school. For the last hour or so, we’ve watched her grow up, along with the…
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Jerusalem Cinematheque and Film Festival Founder Lia Van Leer Dies at 90
Lia van Leer, who died on March 13 at age 90, was a mighty pioneer who ensured that future generations in Israel will appreciate film as an art form. Founder of the Haifa Cinematheque, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, the Israel Film Archive and the Jerusalem Film Festival, she was born Lia Greenberg in the Russian-speaking Bessarabian…
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