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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Theater Legend David Rothenberg Does Some of His Best Work Offstage
David Rothenberg has little doubt that old people are invisible. But invisibility is not all bad, he explained cheerfully in the lobby of his building, in New York City’s Greenwich Village: “See how I’m dressed? It’s great. No one notices,” he said. Yes, his baggy knee-length shorts and loose-fitting, nondescript shirt are not high fashion,…
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The Jewish Designer Who Taught Marc Chagall
‘Though raised in a religious family, I threw off the old faith when I started to live my own life, as did so many men of my age,” the 21-year-old Sergei Diaghilev wrote to Leo Tolstoy in 1893. “I had to convince myself that many things I had previously accepted were merely fairy tales, which…
The Latest
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Books Nice Jewish Girls Finish Whole
Kathy Ebel, a first-generation American, was born in Manhattan. Her blog, Fatherland: There’s No Place Like Home, or How and Why a Nice Jewish Girl Asked Germany to Take Her Back, chronicles her quest to have her German citizenship restored. Kathy considers Brooklyn her hometown and currently lives with her family in Los Angeles. “Claudia…
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Playing Hunger Games on the West Bank
● The Wall By William Sutcliffe Bloomsbury, 304 pages, $17.99 Children’s fairy tales often hinge on the simplest of dichotomies of good versus evil, or known versus unknown. Stray on the path to grandmother’s house, the moral goes, and some hungry carnivore will enjoy you over noodles. Far safer to cling tight to mommy’s skirts,…
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Books Mixing Bowl: DIY Bialys, Falafel Parties
New York City gets its first kosher sports bar! Which team will you root for at the new spot? [Eater] Don’t get us wrong, we love a good bagel and shmear. But, sometimes, life just calls for bialys. Try making some with the help of this easy tutorial. [The Kitchn] Throw a falafel party! Here’s…
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Heading Into the ‘I’ of the Knaidel
The point that has been missed in the great knaidel (knaydel? kneidel? kneydl?) controversy is that the real problem isn’t the spelling of Yiddish words in Latin characters. It’s the spelling of English words in Latin characters. In the Hebrew characters that are native to it, Yiddish has been, for the most part, ever since…
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Bertrand Russell Calls Out Nikita Khrushchev
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illuminating and edifying clippings from the Jewish past. 100 years ago 1913 The American-Romanian Jewish Emancipation Committee held a gala affair at the Waldorf…
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Books What Makes a Jewish Private Eye?
A Star of David carved into the chest of a murdered journalist signals this is no ordinary crime. Which means Jonah Geller, the world-weary private investigator hired by the victim’s family in “Miss Montreal,” is the right man for the job. A Jewish atheist as tough as he’s sharp, Geller is the creation of Howard…
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Books Author Blog: Crossing Delancey
Earlier this week, Royal Young discussed his decision to change his name, interviewed his grandparents, and wrote about his parents’ reaction to his debut memoir, “Fame Shark.” His 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,…
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Is It Last Dance for Kaveret, the ‘Israeli ABBA’?
Fifty years ago, Danny Sanderson was a freshman at the High School of Music & Art, in New York City’s Hamilton Heights. He was new to Manhattan, having grown up in a Tel Aviv suburb, born to parents that had made aliyah from the States in 1948. His father had recently assumed a post as…
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Recalling the Jews, Radicals and Rogues Who Created Greenwich Village
When I was a kid in the 1970s growing up in Brooklyn, making the trek to Greenwich Village was as close as you could get to a trip down the rabbit hole. I knew vaguely about its history, but it wasn’t something folks talked about proudly, not the way they spoke about other parts of…
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