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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Books From Awkward Fat Kid to Confident Gay Activist
A plump, cherubic bar-mitzvah boy beams from the cover the new memoir “Oy Vey! I’m Glad I’m Gay!” (Intracoastal Media). That’s Barry Losinsky, the book’s author, a retired Maryland school psychologist and one of many unsung pioneers in a generation of gay men who came out when it still felt dangerous. Born to Russian-immigrant parents,…
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Books Author Blog: Visiting the Soviet Union
Yesterday, Peri Devaney wrote about working on the postscript for her anthology, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press). Today we hear from Ron Rubin, the prolific professor she anthologized. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and…
The Latest
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Books Jewish Novel Included on Man Booker Longlist
Life in London’s Jewish community and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, billionaires in China and hard times in Ireland all feature in the novels vying for this year’s Man Booker Prize. The longlist for the prize, one of the English language’s top fiction awards, names 13 writers from seven countries. “This is surely the most diverse longlist…
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The Top 10 Allan Sherman Lyrics
10 – “King Louie was living like a king” (“You Went The Wrong Way Old King Louie”) 9 – “Al ‘n Yetta watched an operetta/Leonard Bernstein told them what they saw” (“Al ‘n Yetta”) 8 – “Come let us go there/Live like Thoreau there” (“Here’s to the Crabgrass”) 7 – “And you won’t have a…
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Books How To Be an Egotistical Writer From South Africa
Things I Don’t Want to Know: A Response to George Orwell’s Why I Write By Deborah Levy Notting Hill Editions In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” George Orwell identified four great motives for writing, including aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. The other, he observed, was that writers are “vain and self-centred,” motivated…
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In Praise of Saul Leiter, Color Photography Pioneer
It was a good year for [Saul Leiter][1], who died Tuesday at the age 89. There’s a new documentary about his life and work, an exhibition of his photographs and paintings in London and earlier this year, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the ArtHamptons International Fine Art Fair. Over the course…
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Books Author Blog: Putting Myself on the Line
Peri Devaney’s new book, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press), is now available. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: As a…
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Allan Sherman Was Once Bigger Than the Beatles
● Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman By Mark Cohen Brandeis University Press, 320 pages, $29.95 I loved visiting my maternal grandparents in the Elmhurst section of Queens. Although they lived in a modest, two-bedroom apartment on a side street tucked between Broadway and Roosevelt avenues, the place seemed exotic, as I…
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Books Naftali Herts Kon’s Works Wrenched Out of Poland’s Clutches
On both occasions that the KGB arrested the Yiddish writer and poet Naftali Herts Kon, it burned his writings. When Kon escaped from the Soviet Union to Poland in 1959, he thought everything would be different — but it wasn’t. When the Polish Communists arrested Kon in 1960, they simply confiscated his writings and refused…
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A Coup Is a Coup — Even If We Like Outcome
When is a military coup not a military coup? Whenever, so it would seem, an administration in Washington wants to say it’s something else. Although, as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank observes, “call[ing] the overthrow [of the Egyptian government] a ham sandwich won’t make it any less of a coup,” Washington has preferred to refer…
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Books Yiddish Theater and Birth Control
Earlier this week, Melissa R. Klapper wrote about abortion and the complexity of halacha and five American Jewish women you’ve (probably) never heard of. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: At…
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Opinion Greta Thunberg’s Gaza flotilla was never going to help Palestinians
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Culture I ranked the NYC mayoral candidates exclusively based on their bagel orders
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News How Jewish can you be in a Boca country club? Wrapping tefillin got a family suspended, lawsuit says
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Opinion Mike Huckabee’s stunning, terrifying new gift to the Israeli right
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Israeli weapons display is walled off at Paris Air Show, in move Israelis decry
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Fast Forward Conservative flagship’s first woman chancellor, Shuly Rubin Schwartz, to step down in 2026
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Fast Forward Leonard Lauder, who expanded his Jewish family’s business into a cosmetics empire, dies at 92
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Yiddish מיר פּראַווען מײַן טאָכטערס געבוירן־טאָג אינעם מיקלטCelebrating my daughter’s birthday in the bomb shelter
אינעם באַהעלטעניש קומען פֿאָר קליינע מענטשן־דראַמעס, בשעת אין הימל שטורעמט די גרויסע דראַמע פֿון מלחמה.
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