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
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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
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Books The Susan Sontag of the Venetian Ghetto: Sarra Copia Sulam
According to Don Harrán, Sarra Copia Sulam was the first Italian Jewish woman to “excel” as a public literary figure, writing in various forms and leaving a “personal imprint on them.” She was a kind of Susan Sontag of the Venetian Ghetto. Sulam was also prominent because of her beauty and wealth (her husband was…
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Books Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot vs. Hitler
Agatha Christie (1890–1976), has long been underestimated by readers and fellow writers alike, despite her 80 novels which have sold a reported four billion copies. For example, the astute mystery writer P. D. James, in her newly published “Talking About Detective Fiction,” complains that Christie, with her “pasteboard characters,” has not had a “profound influence…
The Latest
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The Mortara Case
If, as Christians believe, there is a hell, then surely Pope Pius IX earned a place in it for the kidnapping of the 6-year-old Jewish child of the Mortara family in 1858. New York’s enterprising Dicapo Opera Theatre commissioned, and has just given the world premiere of, a new opera based on this sensational true…
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Out of the House of Bondage
When I first came to London in 2001 and, in my brazen, comfortable-in-my- skin North-American way, wished a fellow performer a “happy Passover” during a workshop, she was shocked and cringed, and later told me to “shh in public.” This year, however, the London Jewish community is gearing up for the Other Seder, a 300-person…
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The Israeli Madonna
In politics, Iranian nuclear power is causing Israel concern, but for more than 20 years, an Iranian-born Israeli pop powerhouse has been causing Israelis nothing but pleasure. Israel’s most successful and renowned female vocalist is known by all as Rita. Being known by her first name is only one of the reasons the sensual diva…
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Books Why Is This Night Different? Who’s Asking?
Open-Eyed Heart-Wide Haggadah By Debra Jill Mazer, edited by Shira Leba Batalion, designed by Margo Jennifer Akroyd Double Gemini Press, 62 pages, $32.95 In Every Generation: The JDC Haggadah Commentary by Ari L. Goldman, Foreword by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Devora Publishing, 96 pages., $24.95 The Kabbalah Haggadah: Pesach Decoded By Yehuda Berg The Kabbalah Centre…
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Fussing on the Cliff
All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems By Charles Bernstein Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pages, $26 A few years ago, following a John Zorn concert, I was standing outside, chatting with an acquaintance about the phenomenon of the Jewish avant-garde. Suddenly, a man of a certain age, with a strong Brooklyn accent, barged in:…
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Signposts to the Middle of Nowhere
Neal Gale writes from St. Paul, Minn.: “My parents, both American-born Yiddish/English speakers, would use two words that referred to places that were hard to find or get to: ‘Yah-Chupetz-Ville’ and ‘Allah-Drerden.’ What do these words really mean?” Mr. Gale’s parents had a sense of humor. “Yah-Chupetz-Ville” is none other than Sholom Aleichem’s Yehupetz, the…
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March 26, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward News has reached the Forward that a group of butcher shop bosses in the Bronx has conspired to do away with the union, and so the workers will be forced to go back to the old conditions of 18 to 20 hours per day. They will thus have to…
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The Nigun Project: Reb Nachman’s Nigun
Listen to Jeremiah Lockwood and Sahr Nguajah’s reinterpretation of Reb Nachman’s nigun Nigunim, or songs without words, were a crucial outward expression of the religious experience of the 18th-century Hasidic revivalist movement. The early Hasidim created a new and distinctly Jewish ritual act by singing these meditative and incantatory melodies in chorus with a community…
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Hot Lands of Clay
Considering how often the word “fragile” is used to describe Israel — its politics, peace, peoplehood — it makes perfect sense that a new exhibit at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum uses ceramic art to explore modern life there. “From the Melting Pot Into the Fire: Contemporary Ceramics in Israel,” organized with the Ceramic Artists Association of…
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Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
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Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
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Opinion If Trump is being compared to Hitler, who was Hitler before he was Hitler?
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Culture Aaron Lansky built a home for 1.5 million Yiddish books. Now he’s handing over the keys.
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Fast Forward Greta Thunberg’s Gaza flotilla could reach Israeli waters over the weekend: What you need to know
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Fast Forward French police detain Palestinian man who allegedly struck rabbi with a chair
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