
Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Art collector Anat Meidan came into a grainy focus over Google video, framed against a well-stocked bookshelf. Behind her, her house in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neve Tzedek looked airy and bright. Her husband Joe sat in on our interview, a large Art Nouveau poster hanging on the wall above his head. Art Nouveau…
Polish authorities have accused a Minnesota man, Michael Karkoc, 98, of overseeing the killing of 44 Polish nationals while commanding a unit in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion. In 2013, German authorities opened an investigation into Karkoc’s wartime activities after an Associated Press report alleged that Karkoc lied to United States officials to gain…
Visitors to the Museo di Salo, in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, might face something of a shock in the next several months. In an exhibit titled “Museum of Madness,” opening on March 11, a painting by Adolf Hitler will occupy the gallery, alongside works by well-regarded artists like Francisco de Goya and Francis…
If you won’t be spending this weekend, say, watching the Chicago River being dyed green, or engaging in some, uh, more traditional Irish culture, we’ve got you covered. Start the weekend right, in New York, by hearing “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah speak at the New York Public Library about his recent book, “Born a…
Enigmatic, husky-voiced, Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan is at it again, with a new album, “Triplicate,” arriving at the end of this month. In a newly-released single off that album, Dylan’s take on Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” the singer takes a hazy look back at a lost love. “Sometimes I wonder,” Dylan sings, “why I spend my…
Analyzing data from the 2000 U.S. Census, mental_floss’s Simon Davis discovered that Cohen is New York’s most distinctive surname. If that news has prompted you to wonder at the apparent preeminence of Jews on the East Coast, not so fast: An unscientific analysis of U.S. Census data from 2010 shows we’re likely far less popular…
The reason you and I are able to read almost half of Shakespeare’s plays is that two actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, were among the first to perform them. The duo saved portions of Shakespeare’s scripts — in his era, rather than receiving the full text of a play, actors were given only their…
Where do American Jews live, you wonder? Set your preconceptions aside: It turns out, based on a somewhat arbitrary analysis of last names, that a lot of them live in New York and New Jersey. (That, in case you missed it, was a joke.) This information comes from mental_floss’s Simon Davis, who looked, this past…
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