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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When We Marched Together in Selma
Selma. Nearly 50 years ago it was violent Selma, impossibly racist Selma, site of Bloody Sunday, when peaceful civil rights marchers made their first attempt to cross the Pettus Bridge on the way to the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. They succeeded on their third attempt, protected by federal troops. You’ve seen the famous picture…
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The Beatles Take New York
1914 • 100 years ago A No-Goodnik in Brownsville In July we reported how Max Kaplan, a children’s pants manufacturer in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, ran out on his wife, Yetta Kaplan, and their three children, leaving them without any means of support whatsoever. After the report appeared, Max Kaplan himself appeared in our…
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Hitler and Stalin Sign Pact Turning the Tide of War
1914 • 100 years ago Russia to Give New Freedoms to Jews In relation to the current war and its need to pacify its allies, Russia is making noises about liberalizing its policies toward its Jewish citizens. According to a British journalist for the Times of London, the Russian government is preparing an official document…
The Latest
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A New Literary Take On Soviet-Jewish Immigration
In this year, the year of the Soviet American Jew, when it seems like every man, woman and child who hails from the good old USSR and owns a writing implement has detailed his or her experience, fictionally or otherwise, let us praise Yelena Akhtiorskaya, whose new novel “Panic in a Suitcase” makes something unexpectedly…
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6 Things You Need to Know About Jewish Sperm
Be fruitful and multiply. The Biblical command sounds so straightforward, yet it can be anything but. In order to conceive a child, some aspiring parents — be they lesbian couples, single mothers, or straight men with poor sperm quality — need a little outside help… at least a few milliliters of help, to be precise,…
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Using the Genes of Israeli Wheat To Fight Climate Change
Climate change and population growth have agricultural experts throughout the world increasingly worried. In addition to the usual battles against pests and diseases, poor countries now face threats of food shortages, price spikes and the political instability those conditions can cause. Since the amount of land set aside for agriculture is limited, researchers are therefore…
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How Angelina Jolie Changed Things For People With BRCA Mutations
“I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer,” said actress Angelina Jolie last May when she announced that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy. Describing her pervasive family history of breast and ovarian cancer in a New York Times op-ed, Jolie said that she had…
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Was She at Risk for Cancer or Wasn’t She?
As a newlywed in the 1970s, I watched my vibrant, stylish maternal grandmother go from trim to gaunt. She and my grandfather had raced their family out of Vienna the day Hitler marched in. But now she was diagnosed with an ovarian tumor the size of an orange, too late for treatment to save her…
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Leaving the Worst of The Holocaust to the Imagination
Clearly, playing biographical figures is challenging on many fronts, not least maintaining the delicate balance between authenticity and sensitivity. But for Isobel Pravda, who plays her grandmother, Holocaust survivor and actress Hana Pravda, she is in an advantageous position, not simply because she had a profoundly close relationship with Hana but because her lines are…
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Why Are Jews At Higher Risk For Pancreatic Cancer?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a rarity in more ways than one. She is not only the first Jewish woman to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, but also one of the few survivors of pancreatic cancer. In February 2009, a small tumor in Ginsburg’s pancreas was removed, and reportedly it has not returned since —…
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A Night at The Mmuseumm
Liana Finck has been to Mmuseumm a few times. It occupies an abandoned elevator shaft in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and is beautifully lit and designed so that even everyday and garbage-grade items seem to belong to a heavenly realm. But the closer you get, the less magic they yield. SCROLL DOWN TO ENLARGE. Liana Finck is…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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