Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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Ex-Hasidic Woman Marks Five Years Since She Shaved Her Head
I remember the first time I felt the cold, prickly air on my newly shaved head. I remember looking in the mirror. I remember staring at the pile of auburn hair in the vanity sink of the cozy basement apartment I now shared with my husband of less than a day. I remember my mother…
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Sacred and Profane History of Cherished Jewish Number 18
For Jews the world over, the number 18 has long enjoyed a special status. In Jewish liturgy, the prayer known as the Amidah is also called the “Shmoneh Esreh” (“the 18”), referring to the number of separate blessings that originally comprised the prayer. In the Jewish numerological tradition of gematria, the number 18 has long…
The Latest
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Ruth Messinger and Marilyn Sneiderman Are Odd Couple of Jewish Social Justice
One or more nights a week, a lofty-ceilinged prewar apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan becomes an unexpected nexus of feminist Jewish social justice power. That’s what happens when the heads of two of the country’s major Jewish philanthropic organizations — Ruth Messinger, president and CEO of American Jewish World Service and Marilyn…
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Millennial Giving Gets Jumpstart in Unexpected Way
At 35, Kari Dunn Saratovsky is no longer a millennial by the strict definition. But she has a keen eye for understanding how the 18-30 year old crowd has rethought, retooled and redefined giving. “I want to focus the conversation away from who the millennials are to why they matter and how they are having…
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Neil Blumenthal Is Behind Each Pair of Distributed Warby Parker Glasses
If you’re one of the 150 million Americans who wear some sort of corrective eyewear, you already know an unfortunate truth about shopping for specs: Glasses, particularly fashionable ones, don’t usually come cheap. Click for more Giving stories Frustration with the traditional glasses industry’s byzantine business plan led a band of four former business students…
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Unpacking Why and How People Donate
We give money to causes that touch us personally — our alma maters, synagogues, the hospitals where we receive lifesaving care. As personal giving is a realm governed by sentiment and emotional attachment, the origins of why we donate may seem unpredictable or irrational. Enter Uri Gneezy, a behavioral economist who uncovered the patterns of…
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Putting Florence’s Jewish History Into the Spotlight
If you look out over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, high above the Arno, two domes catch your eye. One is Filipo Brunelleschi’s masterpiece, the immense ribbed dome of the Duomo. The other, off to the right, is much smaller but in its way also distinctive: It is the tall, bright green copper dome of the…
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Honest Tea’s Mission To Sell Less-Sugary Beverages Includes Philanthropy
It all started with a jog. On a business trip to New York in 1997, Seth Goldman went for a run in Central Park. Afterwards, he couldn’t find a drink to quench his thirst. Everything on store shelves was either too sweet or loaded with artificial ingredients. Click for more Giving stories So it got…
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Secret History of Paul McCartney, the Jewish Beatle
Sir Paul McCartney recently released “New,” his first album of original rock songs since 2007’s “Memory Almost Full.” Given the 71-year-old McCartney’s love affair with all things Jewish for the past half-century — including collaborators, business associates, girlfriends and wives — the title could well be meant as a transliteration of the all-purpose Jewish word…
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Books Dan Lewis Is Obsessed With Knowing It All
Here’s something you probably didn’t know: Back in the 1990s, advertisements for a drink called Limonana featuring celebrities such as soccer player Eli Ohana were placed on Israeli buses. But customers who actually tried to buy the lemon and mint lemonade in local stores wound up disappointed. The drink didn’t exist, but had been made…
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Solution to Antwerp Mystery Leads to Yet Another Mystery
Rick Glaser of Orange Mills, Md. writes: “I have a Hebrew Bible published in Antwerp by Christopher Plantin, a Christian who printed a good many Hebrew texts. Its first page gives the date of publication as the Jewish 5333 — that is, 1573. Its last page gives the date of completion as 1574. Given the…
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