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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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A Hungarian Love Story Set Against the Backdrop of Wartime
● I Kiss Your Hands Many Times: Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary By Marianne Szegedy-Maszák Spiegel & Grau, 370 pages, $27 World War II and the Holocaust extinguished so many millions of lives, so many hopes, that each reclaimed story seems like a precious work of salvage. In “I Kiss Your Hands Many Times:…
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Wayward Husband Returns to Kill Ex-Wife in Shocking Murder-Suicide
1913 • 100 years ago Murder in the Rosenthal Home Morris and Bessie Rosenthal had a good business and a good life with their six small children. But he fell in love with another woman, and left his wife and kids to move to Chicago with his new love. Just before he left, he sold…
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How Daryl Roth of ‘Kinky Boots’ Became The Biggest Force on Broadway
Theater producer Daryl Roth says that she has not encountered sexism or ageism on the job, though she’s faced her share of painful challenges, especially early on in her career. “When I started in ’88 -’89, I was new to theater,” Roth recalled as she sat in her exquisitely appointed West 57th Street corner office….
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Books Jewish Book Council Names Sami Rohr Prize Finalists
The Jewish Book Council has named the five finalists of this year’s Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, the Forward has learned. Carolyn Hessel, director of the Jewish Book Council, told the Forward that the five finalists are Sarah Bunin Benor for “Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism”; Matti…
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Tom Clancy’s Mixed Moral Messages to Jewish Readers
Tom Clancy, the author of bestselling techno-thrillers who died on October 1, was called the “novelist with the biggest ideological clout currently active” in a 2002 article by British writer John Sutherland. If this is still true, Jewish readers and others may have cause for concern. Clancy, whose books such as “The Hunt for Red…
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The ‘Godot’ We’ve All Been Waiting For
On a recent Friday evening, I was sitting in Manhattan’s Castillo Theatre, on West 42nd Street, waiting to see a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” As the house lights went down, and the stage lights went up, the play’s minimalist set came into view: a low mound and a bare tree that looked…
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Peter Orner Will Break Your Heart
Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge By Peter Orner Little, Brown, 208 pages, $16.99 Every seasoned author has overarching themes that he or she explores, to success or failure, across a series of books. Mediocrity and defeat — twin afflictions that beset the narrators in Peter Orner’s mournful and moving fiction — are worthy companions,…
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Meet Ezra Goldstein, the Oracle of Literary Brooklyn Community
Once upon a time in Zanesville, Ohio, Ezra Goldstein faced a life-altering choice: stay put and help run the family electrical shop, or chase the dream of being a writer. Fast-forward three decades to Brooklyn, N.Y., circa 2010, when Goldstein faced a fork in the road that in many ways mirrored the first. This time,…
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Amos Gitai Confirms Status as Grand Old Man of Israeli Cinema
‘Rhythm is political,” said Amos Gitai, wearing a black t-shirt and classic Ray-Bans as he leaned back in his chair at the Cinecittà Lounge of the Hotel Excelsior at the 70th Venice Film Festival. It was erev Rosh Hashana and the 62-year-old director was there to present “Ana Arabia,” his new film — shot in…
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Books Firestorm Over Canada’s ‘Guys Only’ Prof
If you’ve been anywhere near a Canadian newspaper or news website in the last week, then you’ll know that a scandal involving author and English professor David Gilmour has been dominating the headlines. The dustup is in response to remarks Gilmour made discounting Canadian, women and minority writers. I asked some Canadian Jewish writers and…
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Music A Tale of Two Nights
In late September, a meeting was sponsored by Encounter, a wonderful organization that wants to ensure that all voices in the Israel-Palestine conflict are heard, to listen to Sam Bahour, a very successful Palestinian entrepreneur. Bahour, born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese-American mother in Youngstown, Ohio, in effect made aliyah to Palestine in…
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