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
-
Books
András Mezei’s Holocaust Poetry for Our Time
András Mezei (1930-2008) was a major Jewish-Hungarian poet who left behind a retrospective exploration of the Holocaust for our time. There are many voices speaking to us of terror, folly, greed, cruelty and absurdity, but Mezei’s poetry makes them sound like our own voices. His testimony has been published in England, in my translation, as…
-
May 20, 2011
100 Years In The Forward Thirteen-year-old Willie Bublik, a resident of Manhattan’s East Harlem, was arrested and handed over to the Children’s Aid Society for slashing the face of 13-year-old Fanny Brodsky. Willie claimed that he did not slash the girl with a knife — he punched her with his fist. Regardless, Fanny required a…
-
Crazy Is as Crazy Does
THE PSYCHOPATH TEST: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE MADNESS INDUSTRY By Jon Ronson Riverhead Books, 275 pages, $25.95 British journalist Jon Ronson has forged an estimable career out of one fascinating topic: the belief systems of kooks. His 2001 book, “Them: Adventures with Extremists,” looked at conspiracy theorists — jihadists, neo-Nazis and the like — and…
The Latest
-
Can We Mix Jewish and Italian?
Stanley Sadinsky of Waterford, Conn., writes: “In recent stories in the Forward about the Triangle tragedy, the victims of the fire were referred to as predominantly ‘Jewish and Italian’ immigrants. Since ‘Jewish’ is a religious connotation and ‘Italian’ refers to country of origin, this descriptive mix was wrong. What should have been said was that…
-
Coneheads Conquer New York
In 1898, Etta Cone was given $300 by her brother, Moses, to buy something nice for their Baltimore family home. Their father had just died, and Moses was hoping that a new piece of furniture or some nice table linens would cheer everyone up. Etta, 38 at the time, returned with five paintings by the…
-
God Is an Indie Band
I was sitting at my desk sometime last fall, when a press release from Shemspeed records landed in my inbox, plugging a record called “Darkcho.” Shemspeed was acting as promoter and distributor, but the album was of mysterious provenance. The press release, playing up the sense of mystery, went so far as to say that…
-
A High-Profile Call for Marriage Equality in Israel
The fight for marriage equality in Israel now features a catchy new video starring real-life couples that are unable to marry legally in Israel. Celebrity power never hurts when it comes to calling attention to a political cause, and the newly premiered video has received media attention due to the participation of actress Hanni Furstenburg,…
-
Books The Scent of Passover
On Monday, Molly Birnbaum wrote about her first writing teacher. Her blog posts are being featured this week 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: On the first night of Passover, my boyfriend and I attended a…
-
Books London Book Club Keeps Arab-Israeli Dialogue Open
When the English novelist Ian McEwan accepted the Jerusalem Prize in January, he did so despite strident demands from pro-Palestinian writers to reject the prize and boycott the Jerusalem Book Fair where it is awarded. But McEwan insisted on his right to engage in dialogue with all Israelis, and argued in the Guardian that literature,…
-
All Abortion Legislation, All the Time?
For a brief while, it seemed like the unending cascade of legislation that together comprise what many of us have been calling the “GOP War on Women” had slowed down from a torrent to a trickle. But then the House brought back and passed H.R. 3, the bill that was the opening salvo in this…
-
Still Fighting the Good Fight
As I was leaving the Public Theater at the conclusion of Tony Kushner’s new, four-hour play, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures,” I ran into an old friend — a notable writer and social activist, a rabble-rouser of sorts who’d spent her entire adult life street fighting,…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Coldplay welcomed Israeli fans onstage ‘as equal humans.’ Why are some Jewish people mad?
- 2
Fast Forward Trump lawyer who praised ‘Mein Kampf’ is now accusing Harvard of antisemitism, report says
- 3
Opinion In the rush to vilify Israel, genocide scholars ignored the truth
- 4
Sports Forget being caught on camera at a Coldplay concert — I was caught on Shabbat at Yankee Stadium
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward University of Oregon cuts spare Judaic studies faculty who had raised alarm
-
Fast Forward As more Jews acquire guns, a Jewish security group urges stronger regulations for synagogues
-
Yiddish די ייִדישע גאַסנשילד פֿונעם פּאַריזער „פּלעצל“ איז צוגעגנבֿעט געוואָרןYiddish sign for the Pletzel, the Yiddish quarter of Paris, is stolen
דער אינצידענט איז פֿאָרגעקומען בעת אַ ממשותדיקן וווּקס פֿון אַנטיסעיטיזם אין פֿראַנקרײַך
-
Fast Forward NYC voters say Mamdani best addressed the Israel-Palestinian conflict, poll shows
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
