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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Looking Back: September 14, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Real estate magnate Harris Diamond, recently retired, had become depressed and pessimistic after the death of his wife. His children tried to cheer him up, but without success. Recently he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, on Lexington Avenue. His death was a suicide. Diamond had closed all the windows…
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Looking Back: September 7, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 Everything was set for the forthcoming wedding of Rose Mann and Isadore Schwartz. But then, tragedy struck: Mann was found dead in the Brooklyn apartment she was setting up for the young couple to reside in after their wedding. She had taken her own life by turning on the gas and…
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Looking Back: August 24, 2012
100 Years Ago 1912 According to New York City District Attorney Charles Whitman, detectives have located Louis “Lefty Louie” Rosenberg, who is one of the suspects wanted for the murder of casino owner Herman “Beansie” Rosenthal. The DA told reporters that he anticipates that “Lefty” will be in police custody by the next week. Reporters…
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The Way I Was
As a Jewish gay man, I know that Barbra Streisand should be a double icon. A strong woman with a knack for musicals, she’s in the gay pantheon right next to Audrey Hepburn and, l’havdil, Madonna. And for Jews, of course, she’s the one who made it big, and did it her way: no name…
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Legends of the Fall
‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” As often as we read these words, which we do every Simchat Torah when beginning the…
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On a Clear Day You Can See Flatbush
Barbra Streisand has a doll shop in her basement. Part of an old-timey underground “street” — complete with clapboard storefronts and faux-stone walls — built beneath the dream home featured in her 2010 coffee table book, “My Passion for Design,” the showroom for antique playthings fills a void from Streisand’s childhood: “I never played with…
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Naomi Replansky’s Career Began in a Factory
In a storage area of Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, there is a striking portrait known to only a few art lovers. It’s the work of Joseph Solman (1909–2008), the Vitebsk-born American Jewish artist whose studio was located for decades over the former site of New York City’s 2nd Avenue Deli. Painted in…
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Bob Dylan’s Best and Worst Album Covers
My relationship with Bob Dylan is similar to my relationship with Woody Allen: I’m a fan of these old Jewish guys, and I get excited when a new release is announced. Even after “Knocked Out Loaded,” even after the film “Celebrity,” I keep the faith — and when I’m treated to a “Time Out of…
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Into Eye of Bob Dylan’s ‘Tempest’
When listening to a new Bob Dylan album, is it possible to hear it in and of itself? Or are we destined to hear only Dylan against Dylan? And if so, how can anything new hold up against those first thrilling chords of “The Times They Are a-Changin’”? Or Dylan gone electric — the ecstatic,…
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Bob Dylan’s 10 Most Jewish Songs
While Bob Dylan has, throughout his life and career, engaged in all sorts of mythologizing and playful biographical falsification, it has never been in the service of denying his heritage. This son of a middle-class appliance salesman from the Upper Midwest, who grew up with a Yiddish-speaking grandmother down the hallway in an extended Jewish…
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Shelter From the Storm
During the holiday of Sukkot, one adds a small prayer when saying the birkat ha-mazon, the Grace After Meals. It goes, Ha-rah. aman yakim lanu et sukkat David ha-nofelet, “May the Merciful One [that is, God] raise up the fallen sukkah of David.” I’ve often wondered what exactly this referred to, and this year I…
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