Adam Langer is the Forward’s executive editor. Born and raised in Chicago, he is the author of the novels Crossing California, The Washington Story, Ellington Boulevard, The Thieves of Manhattan, The Salinger Contract and Cyclorama, as well as the memoir My Father’s Bonus March.
Adam LangerCulture Editor
By Adam Langer
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Culture A Remembrance of Eli Wallach
I first met Eli Wallach one evening in a restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel. He was almost 90 then, and he needed someone to edit the autobiography he was writing. We sipped chamomile tea and he told me some of his stories — how he had gone out dancing with Marilyn Monroe; how he had…
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Culture Canceling ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ Opera Broadcast Elitist and Naive
While Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are welcoming the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to cancel its global video and radio simulcast of John Adams’ opera “The Death of Klinghoffer,” I’m less enthusiastic. The opera has stoked controversy ever since it premiered with its purportedly sympathetic portrayal of the terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise…
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Culture Kenneth Bonert’s ‘Lion Seeker’ Is Best New Novel You Haven’t Read
I first heard of Kenneth Bonert’s “The Lion Seeker” maybe a year ago when I was having lunch with Harcourt Houghton Mifflin executive director of publicity Lori Glazer at some hoity-toity place in Union Square whose name I forget. Yes, this is a boring way to start a story, but bear with me because there’s…
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The Schmooze Putting Tuvia Tenenbom in Context
Racheli Ibenboim chats with writer Tuvia Tenenbom./Photo by Isi Tenenbaum For those who haven’t read much of the work of Tuvia Tenenbom, his most recent column has understandably raised some eyebrows and not a few tempers. Asking a Haredi politician, or any public figure, about her personal life (and her wedding night) would seem to…
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Culture 11 Best Performances by Non-Jewish Actors Playing Jews in the Movies
Observers of the convergence of Jewish and mainstream American culture will be keeping a close watch on this year’s Academy Awards in which — for the first time in movie history as far as the Forward can tell — the two leading contenders for the Best Actor award are non-Jewish actors playing Jewish characters. In…
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Culture Pete Seeger’s 7 Most Jewish Songs
Pete Seeger, who died yesterday at the age of 94, may have been a far greater believer in organizing people than he was in organized religion. “I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods,” he said when he was the subject of a PBS American Masters documentary. But growing up in the Jewish…
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Culture How I Learned Not To Be J.D. Salinger
Back in high school, I was friends with the Salinger boys, but I wasn’t really one of them. As I recall it now, there were three: John, Thom and Barnaby (I’ve changed two of their names and I’ve left one the same, for reasons you’ll probably figure out later). You could recognize the Salinger boys…
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Culture Catching up With Tuvia Tenenbom
Last year, journalist, playwright and critic Tuvia Tenenbom made quite an impression with the publication of “Allein Unter Deutschen” (“Alone Among Germans”; English-language title: “I Sleep in Hitler’s Room”). A frank and funny portrayal of modern-day Germany and the persistence of anti-Semitism there, the book rankled publishers, editors and journalists, while vaulting onto Der Spiegel’s…
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