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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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…
The Latest
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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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Books YA Romance and ‘Hasidsploitation’
Like No Other By Una Lamarche Razorbill, 352 pages, $17.99 In her new young adult novel, “Like No Other,” author Una Lamarche explores the racial and religious tensions in Crown Heights through the chance encounter of a West Indian boy and a Hasidic girl and the relationship that blossoms between the two. When a hurricane…
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Martin Luther King’s Dangerous Friendship
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 46 years ago while standing on the balcony outside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39. In his short lifetime, King collected a cadre of loyal and fervent friends and colleagues. The majority of them, including the reverends Ralph David Abernathy, Andrew Young, John…
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You Can Pay Jews To Live in Dothan, Alabama. But Will They Stay?
Saturday night is bowling night for the Jews of Dothan, Alabama. On a hot night in July, four families braved the torrential rain and gathered for the monthly meeting of the “Mitzvah League,” the town’s Jewish bowling team. Dothan Lanes is a non-descript, squat, faded building on the side of Montgomery Highway. Even the sign…
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Was Pope John Paul II Good for the Jews?
John Paul II’s Letter to a Jewish Friend: The Heart-Rending Story of Two Polish Boys Divided by World War II, Reunited by Love by Gian Franco Svidercoschi The Crossroad Publishing Company, 108 pages, $13.13 In April, when Pope John Paul II became Saint John Paul the Great, admirers recalled the late pontiff’s affinity for the…
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Books New York Exhibit on Children’s Books Highlights Many Jewish Contributions
‘It’s a pattern really. So many of the progressive writers and illustrators of children’s books were Jews,” says Leonard Marcus, who does not usually concern himself with the old parlor game of counting famous Jews. Marcus is curator of the New York Public Library’s exhibit on children’s literature, “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books…
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