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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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Woody Lays an Egg
Woody Allen has made a lot of movies. I know this because I recently tried to watch them all in three days, over the Memorial Day weekend. It was impossible. To watch all 44 of Allen’s feature films back to back (and these are only the ones he wrote, directed or both), would take more…
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Books Author Blog: How Did I End Up Doing This?
Earlier this week, Joshua Henkin talked about his father and grandfather and explored the question: “Are you a Jewish writer?” 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, please visit: For a long time I…
The Latest
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Looking Back: June 29, 2011
100 Years Ago 1912 A gang of Italians held a pogrom in Manhattan, on 114th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, during which two Jews were shot and grievously wounded. Both victims, Morris Stromberg and George Pollack, are in critical condition in Harlem Hospital. The previous evening, Pollack, his wife and the couple’s 14 month-old…
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Rebecca Lepkoff Keeps Going at 96
Street photographer Rebecca Lepkoff moves so fast that even those half her age can barely match her pace. One day the exuberant 96-year-old is shooting Latino storefronts in her Harlem neighborhood, the next she’s snapping her beloved Essex Street on the Lower East Side. In May, she boated up the Seine to Paris, where she…
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Books From Grandfather to Father to Son
Joshua Henkin is the author of “The World Without You,” “Matrimony,” and “Swimming Across the Hudson.” Earlier this week he explored the question, “Are you a Jewish writer?” 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…
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Thoughts That Move in Space
N18 (Complete) By Hank Lazer Singing Horse Press, 84 pages, $15 We associate the best literature with amnesia: While the book is open, we forget ourselves, curled up on a couch while the world melts away. Going through Hank Lazer’s latest poetry collection, “N18,” the reader is likely to experience precisely the opposite: Instead of…
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Books What Archivists Are Worth
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Like the making of history, the writing of history is a collaborative venture. It may look as if ideas are entirely the product of the individual imagination but, as any honest, straight-talking historian will tell you, they are the result of a group effort. The writer-cum-historian gets all the…
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Through Stained Glass, Brightly
If you were to poll the average American Jewish man and woman on the street about what constitutes normative American synagogue architecture, stained glass windows would probably be the very last thing that comes to mind. Some folks might be quick to conjure an image of an elaborately decorated Moorish-like interior; others, jokingly, might bring…
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Books Author Blog: Are You a Jewish Writer?
Joshua Henkin is the author of “The World Without You,” “Matrimony,” and “Swimming Across the Hudson.” 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, please visit: First of all, I want to open up my…
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A Guide for the Judgmental
A reader wishing to be identified only as “Harry” has a question about the Mishnaic tractate of Pirkei Avot or — as it is often called in English — “The Ethics of the Fathers.” (The Hebrew title literally means “Chapters of the Fathers,” the book being divided into six chapters in which many of the…
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‘Girls,’ Sex and the All New JAP
Within her first two minutes on screen, it’s evident that Shoshanna Shapiro is a Jewish American Princess. From perfectly coiffed hair to a pink Juicy Couture tracksuit to her admission that her parents are paying $2,100 a month for her Nolita apartment, Shoshanna, one of the four protagonists on the HBO show “Girls” — which…
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News No Jews allowed: White supremacists are building a segregated community in Arkansas, but is it legal?
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News Zohran Mamdani has represented Astoria’s Jews for 4 years. What do they think of him?
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Culture Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion Right-wing insurrectionists tried to topple the German government in 1920 — it’s happening again in Trump’s America
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Theater Can a kinky new Yiddish musical resurrect a lost art — and one man who got spanked to death?
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Fast Forward Josh Shapiro’s Judaism was not why Kamala Harris snubbed him, new book claims
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Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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