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
-
Memento Mori: Jewish Spirituality and the Sanctification of the World
Earth’s crammed with Heaven And every common bush afire with God — Elizabeth Barrett Browning Western religion can, at times, devalue the world. With eyes turned toward heaven, or the afterlife, it can ignore or denigrate the manifest world, criticizing those who love it too much as “pagan” or, in our time, “humanist.” This is…
-
Wonder of Wonders
Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex By Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider Jewish Publication Society of America, 220 pages, $40 There is something profoundly alluring about the manuscripts of great literary works. Whether the handwritten fair copy of “Ode to a Nightingale” or a stray page of Shakespeare, Kafka’s diary…
-
Talking for Weeks, in Tongues
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it…
The Latest
-
Art Jews Have Been Magic for Thousands of Years
We all believe in magic. Despite 300 years of industrial and social revolution, as well as unparalleled explanation of the natural world through the scientific method, we still throw salt over our shoulders, put up hamsas in our homes, wear lucky shirts to job interviews and run through tested game-day rituals, whether we are playing…
-
Two Poems by Jacqueline Osherow
Love Song to That Performance Poet, My Mother Mom! Guess what? I didn’t inherit nothing — Okay, so maybe I didn’t get your face, your generosity, your perfect kindness. That was you in my kitchen this very morning when Magda refused breakfast (a tad rudely) and I offered her a nice glass of grapefruit juice…
-
May 28, 2010
100 Years Ago in The Forward Dora Neigerman caught a burglar in her third-floor Delancey Street apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the middle of the night. Unable to scare him off, Neigerman began to fight with him, smashing him over the head numerous times with a brass spittoon. Though stunned, the burglar continued…
-
Formal Punk
Listen to The Shondes’ “Make It Beautiful” Listen to The Shondes’ “My Dear One” There may be more blatantly Jewish punk bands than the Brooklyn-based Shondes — Australia’s YIDCore used to play a ska cover of “If I Were a Rich Man,” and Can!!Can’s Patrick Aleph stage-dives while screaming out lessons from the midrash —…
-
The Nigun Project: Melodies I Have Seen
While doing my research for the third installment of The Nigun Project, I discovered a melody in a Yiddish chapbook that was published in New York City in 1947. The book bears the striking title “Yiddish Nigunim I Have Heard…and Seen.” This magical little book, compiled by Moshe Gutman, constitutes a kind of testimonial and…
-
The Replacements
The Book of Genesis is filled with replacement and impersonation: Jacob disguises himself as his twin, Esau, to get his father’s inheritance; Rachel replaces her sister, Leah, in Jacob’s bed. So maybe it’s fitting that the new Bible-based show, “Jacob’s House,” at New York’s Flux Theatre Ensemble, is itself a replacement. The show originally scheduled…
-
The Salon Celebrates Five Episodes; Sara Hurwitz Is on the Panel
Rabba Sara Hurwitz, the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s President and CEO Elise Bernhardt and the author of “Sabbath World,” Judith Shulevitz, are guests on the fifth episode of The Salon, The Jewish Channel’s women’s issues chat show. Discussion topics include the debate over Orthodox women serving in the rabbinate in light of a major rabbinic…
-
The Uxorious Egotist
Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin By David C. Dougherty The University of Illinois Press, 296 pages, $40 Stanley Elkin was not an autobiographical novelist. He never franchised fast-food restaurants (“The Franchiser”), wrestled professionally (“Boswell”), ferried terminally ill children to Disney World (“The Magic Kingdom”) or had sex with a bear (“The…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Sports First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 2
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 3
Culture Why do Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas?
- 4
Politics This politician refused to say ‘Happy Hanukkah,’ then blamed ‘political correctness’ for the backlash
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Waiting on line on Christmas is a time-honored New York tradition — was it ever thus?
-
Fast Forward The data is in: For many in the Northeast, Christmas isn’t Christmas without Chinese food
-
Fast Forward StopAntisemitism names Tucker Carlson ‘Antisemite of the Year’ as 2024 winner Candace Owens ramps up anti-Jewish rhetoric
-
Fast Forward Jewish groups defend European media monitors banned for what State Dept. calls ‘censorship’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
