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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Lauren Bacall’s 7 Greatest Moments
Born Betty Joan Perske, the daughter of Jewish parents in the Bronx, Lauren Bacall would soon became the epitome of New York cool. She was the slim, caustic partner of Humphrey Bogart, whom she married at the age of twenty and starred with in such films as “To Have and Have Not,” “Dark Passage,” “Key…
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The Unbearable Sadness of Being Robin Williams
From the beginning of his career straight through to the end, Robin Williams was a superstar, an unavoidable cultural presence, yet when I attempt to conjure memories of his performances, I don’t compulsively recite famous punchlines or stream emblematic bits in my head, not at first. It takes a second before that ribbity “nanu nanu”…
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A Peach of a Synagogue
If you were asked to guess the top tourist destination in each state, you might go with the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, the “Bean” monument in Chicago, or Central Park in New York City. Your local synagogue might not immediately spring to mind. Unless you live in Savannah, Georgia, that is. The reform congregation…
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10 Facts About Georgia Jews
1.127,470 Jews live in Georgia. That’s 1.3% of the population. 2.About 92% of Georgia’s Jews live in Atlanta, and the city’s number of congregations in the city has gone from 5 in 1968 to 38 in 2005. 3.Colonel Mordechai Sheftall, from Savannah, was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the Continental Army. 4.Former New York…
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How and Why We Mourn Robin Williams
It has become a depressingly familiar and ritualized cycle of mourning. I heard the news on Facebook. If I’d been on Twitter, I would have heard it there — Robin Williams dead at 63 of an apparent suicide. Those who knew him shared memories of his talent and his generosity. Those who met him once…
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When Men Get Breast Cancer
When a friend pulled Harvey Singer in for a bear hug one weekend in Chicago in 2008, a shooting pain went through Singer’s chest. A couple weeks earlier, Singer had noticed a change on the side of his left nipple but had shrugged it off as the result of being “old and a little out…
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Genetics Lab Refuses To Share Data That Could Save Lives
Myriad Genetics may have lost its singular hold on the market for BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing in May 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled against the patenting of genes, but few outside the science and medical communities are aware that Myriad continues to possess a repository of patient data from BRCA testing that it does…
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Uniting Jewish Heritage Sites Across Czech Republic
No Jews have lived in this nondescript little town 80 miles southeast of Prague since the Holocaust, but driving in, you can’t miss the synagogue. Rose-pink and ochre, with fanciful arched windows and a central peaked roof flanked by two squat towers, it rises dramatically over the rooftops, dominating the otherwise drab surroundings. Inside, chandeliers…
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Genetic Nerve Disease Puts Photographer on Other Side of the Lens
It began as just a limp — and then it puzzled doctors for seven years. Back in 2003, Hollywood was Robert Zuckerman’s stomping ground. The acclaimed photographer, then 48, was at the peak of his career, preparing to shoot the promotional materials for the Disney blockbuster “National Treasure” starring Nicolas Cage and Harvey Keitel. He…
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From Seder to Yoga, a Jewish Approach to Treating Alzheimer’s Disease
On a recent July afternoon, a group of residents at the Hebrew Home of Riverdale, New York congregated on a shady terrace. They were sitting in a semicircle facing Deborah Michaels, the instructor leading the yoga class. “Okay now we’re going to lift our hands up,” Michaels said. The participants raised their arms, some more…
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How Roman Polanski and Jonathan Demme Blur the Line Between Fiction and Reality
One of my favorite TV shows — and one of the best TV shows of all time, I’d argue — is “The Larry Sanders Show,” a sitcom that ran from 1992 to 1998 on HBO. Created by and starring comedian Garry Shandling, “The Larry Sanders Show” was a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional late-night talk…
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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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Culture Rabbi, get your gun
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Fast Forward How the Jewish commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ could help a woman challenge Kentucky’s abortion ban in court
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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