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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Books Collective Guilt vs. Collective Fear
Randy Susan Meyers’s most recent book, “The Comfort of Lies,” is now available. She is also the author of “The Murderer’s Daughters,” a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. 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…
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The History of Mel Brooks, Part I
Ironically, it was Mel Brooks who asked the first question: “So, how long have you been working for the Jewish Daily Forward?” Then he wondered aloud how I spell my name, and he graded my response. “You got all the letters right,” he said, and laughed when I ask for extra credit for getting them…
The Latest
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How Do You Say ‘Fuhgeddaboudit’ in Yiddish?
‘What’s Fuhgeddaboudit in Yiddish?” The Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens asks in a column in which he concludes that, following President Obama’s Syrian chemical weapons shuffle, the president’s promise to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon has lost its credibility. Was Stephens suggesting that “Fuhgeddaboudit” is an English version of an original Yiddish expression?…
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Film & TV When the Jewish Mother and Son Get Their Day on the Silver Screen
A Jewish mother gives her son two ties on the first night of Hanukkah. The following morning, when he comes down for breakfast, he is wearing one of them. The mom says, “What’s the matter — you didn’t like the other one?” — Sheldon Kimmelman in “Old Jews Telling Jokes” Even while guffawing at old…
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How a 1976 Exhibit Changed the Way We Think About Jewish History
We don’t often think of ideas and concepts as having a biography or, better yet, a pedigree or yikhes. But like people, they also partake of the life cycle: Ideas, too, come from somewhere before going out on their own. And so it is with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which recently…
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Cantors Consider Joining the AFL-CIO
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 From the shtetl of Romanov, in the Mogilev Gubernia, comes news of…
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Books The Mishpokhe Connection
Jonathan Kirsch is book editor of The Jewish Journal. Earlier this week, he wrote about Jewish resistance, restoring Herschel Grynszpan to the pages of history, Herschel Grynszpan’s scandalous theory of defense and Kristallnacht. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series….
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Vladimir Nabokov’s Son Says Famous Father ‘Was Close to Jewish Culture’
Dmitri Nabokov, the only child of Vladimir Nabokov and Véra Nabokov (nee Slonim), died 22 February, 2012, in Vevey, Switzerland, at the age of 77. Dmitri Nabokov was a person of many gifts and was one of the most dedicated Jewish sons I have ever encountered. In responding to his parents’ critics — or to…
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Books Kristallnacht and Herschel Grynszpan
Jonathan Kirsch is book editor of The Jewish Journal. Earlier this week, he wrote about Jewish resistance, restoring Herschel Grynszpan to the pages of history and Herschel Grynszpan’s scandalous theory of defense. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For…
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14-Year-Old Author Tells Story of Holocaust in Graphic Novel
Perhaps the most surprising detail about “Keeping My Hope,” a new, self-published graphic novel about the Holocaust, is its author: Christopher Huh is only 14 years old. The second most surprising detail is that he’s not even Jewish. He’s a second-generation Korean American from suburban Maryland who was only vaguely aware of the Holocaust before…
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Jews of Bukhara Helped Me To Understand Personal History
I don’t remember the name of the man who sold the dictionary to me. He was one of the many people I met in the 1990s who was getting rid of his belongings in advance of his migration from Bukhara. He invited me to his home and showed me the small stack of books on…
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