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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Art
Inside Sasha Velour’s Talmud of Drag
The Talmud didn’t make Sasha Steinberg a drag queen. But it did help inspire Vym, the “drag culture” glossy he launched in July as Sasha Velour, his alter ego. “What struck me about the Talmud, and so much Jewish philosophy, is that it’s not always one narrative,” Steinberg told the Forward from the Brooklyn apartment…
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If You Take a 10-Year-Old To See a Shakespeare Play
If you take a 10-year-old to see a Shakespeare play, chances are she’ll want to know how long the show is. You’ll tell her you don’t know for sure, but three hours would be a good guess. Before she rolls her eyes, you’ll remind her that the production of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the…
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Art 100 Years of Art and Chaos at London’s Ben Uri Gallery
One hundred years ago, on July 1, 1915, a Jewish decorative art association called Ben Ouri was founded in the heart of London’s East End. It was led by Lazar Berson, a charismatic Russian Jewish émigré artist whose vision was to create a Jewish arts society that would support Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrant artists and craftsmen,…
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A Broadway Family’s Off Broadway Life
Russell Granet (left), 50, is the executive director of Lincoln Center Education. His husband, David Beach (right), 51, is an actor most recently seen on HBO’s “Veep” and on Broadway this year in “Fish in the Dark” and “It’s Only a Play.” Their daughter, Sadie Kate Granet-Beach, currently 6 and 11/12ths, is — according to…
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KlezKamp Lives On With ‘Yiddish New York’
When the announcement was made last fall that KlezKamp, the Yiddish folk arts gathering that took place in the Catskills every winter for the last 30 years, was ending, some of the movers and shakers in the klezmer scene resolved to organize a replacement. Now comes word that Yiddish New York will take place in…
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The 100-Year Vision of Moscot Eyewear
There’s an old Yiddish expression my Lower East Side grandmother Ida was fond of: “When luck happens, offer it a seat.” Luck happened. My family has been loyal customers of Moscot Eyewear for nearly 100 of its 100 years; my bespectacled elderly father will buy from no one else, and my grandparents bought there when…
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New Yiddish Journal Launches In Style
On August 3 more than 100 people packed the second floor of Solas, a trendy bar in the East Village. Over the din of music by Nicki Minaj and Drake, a group of people huddled in a corner discussing stills from a new website being displayed on a laptop. A passerby, seeing a large group…
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Did Josef Mengele Alter This Survivor’s Genes?
The Holocaust altered Eva Kor’s body forever in a way that she still doesn’t fully understand. When she was ten years old, Kor and her twin sister, Miriam — along with 1,500 other sets of twins — were test subjects of Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi physician who used fraternal and identical twins at Auschwitz…
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One Jewish Woman’s Quest to Become Joan Didion
I can’t wait to read “The Last Love Song,” Tracy Daugherty’s upcoming Joan Didion biography, or to see the film Hollywood producers are planning to make of Didion’s iconic “Goodbye to All That.” I was in college when I first devoured that essay about the Episcopalian author’s early years in New York. I can envision…
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Why Jewish Anxiety Is No Laughing Matter
I’ve been biting my nails ever since I’ve had a full set of baby teeth. Sometimes I twirl my hair, tap my foot or overanalyze everyday situations. For me, Woody Allen’s neurotic existential musings or Larry David’s socially awkward malaise come as assurance I’m in good company. They validate anxiety as a fact of life….
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Want To Live to 120? Look to the Jews.
Molveine Karan raised her arms steadily above her head, tapped her foot lightly against the floor as she moved her leg, and tilted her neck back and forth. “If you don’t do it, you stiffen up like a board,” the 98-year-old said. Karan was demonstrating her morning routine, which includes an hour of stretching and…
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News Why do some people think Mike Lawler is Jewish?
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Art At the Venice Biennale, protests, self-mutilation and rage against Israel and Russia. Is anyone left to talk about the art?