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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Of Calamity Jane. Mount Rushmore and 5 Other Things Facts About Jewish South Dakota
1) 345 Jews live in South Dakota, the smallest Jewish population in any state of the union. 2) South Dakota is the only state without a Chabad presence. 3) Mt. Zion, founded in 1903 in Sioux Falls, is the state’s oldest congregation. 4) Blanche Colman was the first female lawyer to practice in the state….
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Can a ‘Twedding’ Be Kosher?
As the 200 guests entered the wedding hall at the Marriot hotel in Kansas City, Missouri last month, they had to wish the bride and groom mazel tov twice; first, to Brittany Choikhit and her groom, Max Margolies, and then to Brittany’s sister, Ashley, and her groom, Daniel Held. “We always wanted a double wedding,…
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Art Why the Status of Judaica Is Waning
Last month’s column, as you may recall, made much of Judaica collectors who prefer to sell rather than donate their holdings. No sooner had I made that claim than a number of readers as well as colleagues duly informed me that I was barking up the wrong tree. Dolefully, they pointed out that even if…
The Latest
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Film & TV Barbara Kopple Faces The Nation
“Hot Type,” Barbara Kopple’s documentary about The Nation, celebrating the liberal magazine’s 150 years, begins with a snappy rat-a-tat of typing. We see typewriters from every era, signaling the passage through time via technology. As The Nation’s editor in chief for 20 years, Katrina vanden Heuvel, notes in the film, “I used to man the…
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The De-Jewification of ‘Dr. Zhivago’
The U.S. government might be on the outs with Vladimir Putin, but on the Great White Way, Russian culture has never been more in. Boris Pasternak’s monumental novel “Doctor Zhivago” was reincarnated first as a 1965 Hollywood movie and now as a Broadway musical. It’s no compliment to the show’s creative team (music by Lucy Simon,…
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‘Heather Has Two Mommies’ Gets a New Look For Mother’s Day
Leslea Newman’s iconic picture book “Heather Has Two Mommies” had a simple beginning. A woman approached Newman on the street in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she lived at the time, and said her family needed a book to which her daughter could relate. Meaning that she wanted to read a book to her daughter that featured…
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From This You Make a Living?
What do you want to do when you grow up? my Grandma Sil always asked. “I want to be a cantor,” is what I said. It made her smile and hug me. “Cantor” meant I was not only deeply engaged in the lessons of my yeshiva but also that I longed to sing about it….
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Film & TV How Shalom Auslander Learned To Be ‘HAPPYish’
Shalom Auslander is not the most upbeat guy in the world. Ask if he’s happy, and his response tells you all you to need to know: “My wife and my kids. I’m afraid of them dying all the time. I can’t hear a siren go by without thinking my house is on fire and everyone…
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POEM: Lag B’Omer
And at home in these wasted paradises after the invasion and the raising of the flag and Cain after the ousting of one dictator and the installing of another the carcasses will be gnawed white – Kwame Dawes Thirty-three days after we left Egypt, the manna started dropping from heaven. It lay on the ground…
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The Libyans Give Ancient Music a Fresh New Sound
The Libyans are actually Israelis. But Yaniv Raba and Yankale Segal have carved a singular pop niche by reimagining ancient Libyan-Jewish sacred hymns, or piyutim, as worldbeat anthems. With their distinctly modern mashup of musical styles, they’re also rescuing a beautiful genre of devotional poetry that came very close to disappearing. Arabic, African, Turkish and…
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How Ron Rifkin Went From the Fur Business to Carnegie Hall
“I’m just an actor,” exclaims Ron Rifkin, who then adds the most un-actor-y words ever spoke by an actor in the history of theater: “I don’t like to talk about myself.” He mentions his reluctance because our conversation had veered into unexpected territory, at least for him. I’d asked about his approach to some past…
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