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
-
That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
-
Judith Plaskow is Still Standing, Twenty Years On
It has been 20 years since Judith Plaskow published the first-ever book of Jewish-feminist theology, “Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism From a Feminist Perspective.” Much about Jewish life and practice has changed since then. But, Plaskow says, not enough. In “Standing,” she looked back at a watershed moment in her life as a Jew and…
-
Not Just the King’s Speech
Phil Schneider is fully aware that his most recent film, “Going With the Flow,” might disappoint some viewers. First, unlike Oscar-hopeful “The King’s Speech,” it portrays no royalty. Second, and more substantial, as an award-winning Jewish speech therapist who has worked in the industry for more than 40 years, Schneider knows that some people will…
The Latest
-
Books Jewish-American Literature as Multicultural Literature
Erika Dreifus‘s first book, “Quiet Americans,” will be published on January 19th. 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: Early next month, four other writers — Andrew Furman, Kevin…
-
Taking on the Rabbinate — on YouTube
Vered Shavit did everything she could to avoid the Israeli rabbinate. When she got married in 2005, she flew all the way to Cyprus for a civil ceremony, then had a Reform ceremony in Israel and never registered in Israel as married. But it didn’t matter. Despite everything, when she and the man decided this…
-
Truth and Lies: A Q&A With Montreal Film Producer Harry Gulkin
In 1976, the Montreal-made film “Lies My Father Told Me” became the first — and, to date, the only — Canadian movie to win the Golden Globe Award for best foreign film, beating out Ingmar Bergman’s “The Magic Flute,” among other nominees. The movie takes place in the mid-1920s and depicts the relationship between a…
-
In Search of ‘Lies My Father Told Me’
Sometimes, a movie strikes us just right and we carry it with us through life. For me, it was a movie’s opening scene, with a horse-driven carriage making its way through the back alleyways of Montreal. Running after the wagon is a young boy looking for his grandfather, crying out “Zayde!” In the background, we…
-
Books ‘Catcher in the Rye’ Sequel Banned in U.S.
A phony. That’s what the estate of J.D. Salinger is calling Frederik Colting, the Swedish novelist who’s created a sequel to Salinger’s beloved 1951 magnum opus, “Catcher in the Rye.” The BBC reports that Colting’s “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” which depicts “Catcher” protagonist Holden Caulfield as a haunted septuagenarian, has been banned…
-
January 21, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Our Gallery of Disappeared Men features photographs and descriptions of men who have abandoned their wives and families, often leaving them with nothing. The purpose behind the feature is to find the men and force them to pay some kind of restitution to their families. But now the Forverts…
-
Art Whithersoever Thou Goest… Even to China
Beijing (formerly Peking) opera is not like anything else. Certainly it?s not like Western opera, except to the extent that both art forms have singers act out stories. To an untrained Western ear, the women?s voices in Chinese opera can resemble nothing so much as the mewing of cats, as cats and female singers of…
-
Books In the Shadow of a Saint
In her final days, in the last letter she sent home, Simone Weil reassured her parents: “You have another source of comfort.” She was referring to her niece, Sylvie Weil. Sylvie — with her myopia, pale complexion and dark, cropped hair — bears an unnerving resemblance to her aunt, and has spent her life battling…
-
Tell Me About Your Childhood, Mr. Mahler
The Forward speaks with Percy Adlon, director of ?Mahler on the Couch:? ?Mahler on the Couch,? a lush fictionalization of a 1910 meeting between composer Gustav Mahler and psychologist Sigmund Freud, opens the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 12. The film, from German father-and-son filmmakers Percy and Felix Adlon, is mostly fiction: Only…
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion Greta Thunberg’s Gaza flotilla was never going to help Palestinians
- 2
Culture I ranked the NYC mayoral candidates exclusively based on their bagel orders
- 3
News How Jewish can you be in a Boca country club? Wrapping tefillin got a family suspended, lawsuit says
- 4
Opinion Mike Huckabee’s stunning, terrifying new gift to the Israeli right
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture His parents fled the Nazis in 1937 — now he’s using his chutzpah to fight Donald Trump
-
Fast Forward 24 hours of war leaves Israel reeling, with bomb shelters full and flights canceled
-
Fast Forward In US lawmakers’ response to Israel’s strike on Iran, sweeping support with signs of tension
-
Opinion Trump’s latest move makes Mahmoud Khalil a Joseph for our times
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism