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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Books
B.J. Novak Is Writing a Children’s Book
All that dancing around to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” in “Saving Mr. Banks” seems to have given B.J. Novak a taste for children’s literature. The Jewish actor and TV writer, who plays composer/lyricist Bob Sherman in the movie about the making of “Mary Poppins,” has signed with Penguin Young Readers Group to do a…
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Picturing Love and Intermarriage in New York
In September 2009, an Israeli TV and internet campaign aimed at dissuading Jews from marrying non-Jews upset many in the Diaspora – including Yael Ben-Zion, an American-born photographer, who lives together with her French, non-Jewish husband in New York City. So Ben-Zion, 40, who grew up in Israel, posted an ad at an online parenting…
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Setting the Record Straight on Amiri Baraka
The Newark-born playwright and poet Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka), who died on January 9 at age 79, has been receiving tributes, including in a few Jewish publications. This is unusual, for regardless of the supposed merits of his writings, over some decades Baraka produced a consistent series of…
The Latest
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Polish Parliamentarian Says Jews Must Emigrate
1913 •100 years ago Moyshe the Greener To Face Death Twice For the second time, Morris Bernstein, better known as “Moyshe the Greener,” will finally stand before a Brooklyn grand jury for last December’s murder of the Brownsville cloakmaker Harry Vileinki. The case made waves because fellow cloakmaker Abe Lipshitz was initially arrested for the…
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How Lena Dunham’s ‘Girls’ Rescued My American Dream
I discovered “Girls” when it was well into the second season. I had lived in New York for several months to attend the Columbia University School of Journalism. The initial excitement of being in the City That Never Sleeps had waned. I had gotten used to discovering that almost every other person I met was…
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How I Won a Marathon in Israel
There are two Meccas, one in Saudi Arabia and the other, you’ll never guess, in Israel. The one in Saudi Arabia is for Muslim pilgrims, the one in Israel is for journalists. There are more journalists in this little part of the world than cats. And, believe you me, there is no place on the…
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Is ‘Quenelle’ Backwards Version of Nazi Salute?
By now you may think you’ve heard or read all you want to about the quenelle, the double hand movement that was popularized by the French comedian Dieudonné and has been all over the news since the French soccer star Nicolas Anelka performed it after scoring a goal in a game in England on December…
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The Secret Jewish History of Downton Abbey
Millions of TV viewers across the world continue to be enthralled by “Downton Abbey.” The BBC series chronicles the lives of an Edwardian noble family — and their host of loyal servants — forced to adjust to modernity as it ends the Victorian era and ushers in the revolutionary changes brought on by World War…
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Haim Hears a Who as Dr. Seuss Musical Comes to Israel
(Haaretz) — Almost no work of children’s literature can compare with the books of Dr. Seuss. Their words and illustrations carry abundant possibilities, as well as an invitation to other creative artists to take inspiration from them and run with it. Anyone who has read Dr. Seuss’s works knows about the places you’ll go when…
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Rescued Auschwitz Opera ‘The Passenger’ Gets Long-Awaited Premiere in Houston
For nearly half a century, “The Passenger,” a gripping opera set in Auschwitz, lay dormant. Commissioned by the Bolshoi Theatre in the former Soviet Union, it was supposed to receive its premiere in 1968, but that never happened. “Soviet authorities didn’t think a piece about Jews would further the interests of the communist state,” said…
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For Jana Herzen, Jazzy Creativity Is in Jewish Bloodline
Jana Herzen, whose jazz record label Motéma Music celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2013, confides that the Forward played an important role in her family history. Her great-grandmother walked out on her family when Herzen’s grandmother, the eldest of six, was 11. One day she just disappeared from their home in the Bronx and was…
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