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
How Jews Became ‘White’ On Broadway
Even if you’re not a theater nerd, Warren Hoffman’s “The Great White Way” (Rutgers University Press) makes a fascinating read. The book’s subtitle, “Race and the Broadway Musical,” only hints at its breadth, and the depth of Hoffman’s laser-sharp analysis of an all-American art form. Billed as “the first book to reveal the racial politics,…
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Putting Persian Back in the Talmud
● The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context By Shai Secunda University of Pennsylvania Press, 272 pages, $55 Academic study of the Talmud once provoked anger. In “The Promise,” Chaim Potok’s 1969 sequel to “The Chosen,” Orthodox rabbinical student Reuven Malter wants to emend manuscripts and track the text’s historical development. His…
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What If Miley Cyrus Did the Nasty in the Shvitz?
All the talk in my local sauna over the last few months has been about twerking or, in its YIVO-authorized spelling, tverking. One recent Friday morning I reached under the bench for the 1689 vellum edition of the Urban Dictionary that the management stores next to the birch branches to find what it says on…
The Latest
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‘Hockey Maven’ Stan Fischler Has Love Affair With Sport — and Israel
(JTA) — As the Boston Bruins buzz the Islanders net throughout the opening period of a game at the Nassau Coliseum, Stan Fischler is standing 10 feet behind the Plexiglas to the left of New York goaltender Kevin Poulin. Fischler, a hockey broadcaster for four decades, can feel the rattling boards of forechecking Bruins. There’s…
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Leo Frank Emotionless as Judge Pronounced Death Sentence
1913 •100 years ago Leo Frank Sentenced to Death Brooklyn-born Leo Frank, superintendent of a pencil factory in Atlanta, was sentenced a week ago for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, an employee of the factory. At Frank’s sentencing, the judge asked him if he had anything to say. He responded: “False stories have been…
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Palestinian ‘Arab Spring’ Turns Out To Be SodaStream Well
Experts have long said water would spark the next Middle East flare-up, but no one expected the conflagration to be filled with bubbles. Just when it seemed the screaming headlines about SodaStream and its controversial Scarlett Johansson Super Bowl ad had died down, along comes a Palestinian farmer to upset the seltzer cart. On Tuesday…
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Frank Sinatra’s Busy Years
Long-dead singer admits through publicist that he fathered Ronan Farrow, Zosia Mamet, Allison Williams and Barbra Streisand.
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How Doris Day and Miss Clairol Helped Jews Join the Mainstream
A few months ago, I happened across a reference to the late 19th century notion that the Jews suffered disproportionately from colorblindness. This malady, it was argued at the time, explained a lot about them, most especially their putative penchant for things bold and flashy or what we today would most likely call “bling.” Whether…
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Books Reinventing Israel in Argentina
Every year, of the 75,000 young Israelis who complete their military service, it is estimated that around one third leave everything behind to go backpacking. The nomadic ramble through Southeast Asia and South America in that indeterminate period between youth and adulthood is hardly unique to Israel, but it takes on its own characteristics at…
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Barbie’s Ongoing Adventures in Sponsorship
February 13, 2014 “The reality is, we just didn’t sell enough Barbie Dolls.” — Bryan G. Stockton, chief executive of Mattel, shortly before the Barbie brand joined forces with Sports Illustrated’s anniversary swimsuit issue. Mattel paid for the “opportunity” to appear in the issue according to The New York Times and has used #unapologetic to…
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Jan Koum, WhatsApp and the Meaning of ‘The Walls Have Ears’
Benjamin Lerner writes about an interview he came across in the media with Jan Koum, the rags-to-riches Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union who founded WhatsApp and recently sold it to Facebook for a reported $19 billion dollars. Referring to WhatsApp’s emphasis on privacy in its social network, Koum said: “I grew up in…
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