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
-
On the northwest side of Chicago, my old Jewish neighborhood may soon live on in infamy
Albany Park was home to Rosenblum's Bookstore, Weinberg's Clothing — and also alleged DC shooter Elias Rodriguez
-
Remembering a Great Voice from Regostan: Bukharan Jewish Musician Ilyas Malayev
Often forgotten in the upsurge of interest in Jews from the former Soviet Union, the Bukharans have claim to a grievance. But, on December 14, a gala concert, “Ilyas Malayev: Remembering the Poet Laureate of the Bukharian Jews,” will be performed at New York’s Center for Jewish History, presented by that organization’s An-sky Institute for…
-
Anna Sokolow
Alvin Ailey danced for her as a young man. She worked with Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams on Broadway, and taught Patti LuPone and Robin Williams at the Juilliard School. Anna Sokolow passed away in 2000 at the age of 90; she would have been 100 years old in 2010. This inventive, elegant yet gritty…
The Latest
-
Berlin Jews and Jazz
Celebrations for the 70th birthday of legendary jazz label Blue Note Records are taking place at an unlikely venue. The Jewish Museum Berlin is tooting its horn with an exhibition of photographs by two of Blue Note’s Jewish photographers, Francis Wolff and Jimmy Katz. Wolff, a Berlin native, helped found the label in 1939, along…
-
Skeletons in the Closet
Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret: By Steve Luxenberg Hyperion Books, 401 pages, $24.99 In a letter written on a yellow legal pad, placed in an envelope marked “Do not open until after my death,” Beth Luxenberg (née Cohen) directed that all her possessions be distributed equally among her children and grandchildren. She…
-
The Catskills, Under a New Lens
For anyone who stood on line, week after week, for the Saturday midnight screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in the 1970s, the West Village theater now known as the IFC Center will forever be branded the Waverly. For a time during my teens, going down to that theater with friends to watch the…
-
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Lévy Scorned: novelist Justine Lévy’s Latest Screed.
Justine Lévy, daughter of the headline-grabbing French philosopher and “public intellectual” Bernard-Henri Lévy (known in France as BHL), is once again in the news with a new novel from Paris’ Stock publishers, “Mauvaise fille” (Bad Daughter ). Like her previous books, “Mauvaise fille” is not really a “roman à clef” because no “clef” (key) is…
-
Typography in the Talmudic Tradition: American Jewish Designer Herb Lubalin
Fans of splendid graphic design and typography have until December 8 to catch the exhibit, “Lubalin Now” at The Cooper Union’s Cooper Gallery. It opened November 5 to honor the highly influential Jewish typographer and graphic designer Herb Lubalin who died in 1981. Known for his work for the magazines “Avant Garde,” “Eros,” and “Fact,”…
-
Arguments for Tsnius No. 614: JILFs and Bad Sex
Jewish women are so hot that everyone wants to gaze at them and more. If you don’t know what a MILF is, I’m not telling you what a JILF is, except that the J stands for Jewesses, but this is what Details magazine reported: In a recent poll on the porn blog Fleshbot, “Jewish girls”…
-
Metamorphosis
What if Kafka had been hip? Eli Valley’s latest comic delves into the world of cool Jews in the Habsburg Empire, circa 1903. Click on the thumbnail to the right for a larger version: Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His column, “Comics Rescued From a Burning Synagogue in Bialystok and Hidden in a…
-
Sami Rohr Finalists Announced
The finalists for the 2010 Sami Rohr Prize have been announced. The prize, the largest one in Jewish writing ($100,000 to the winner, $25,000 to the first runner-up), alternates each year between fiction and nonfiction and this year its nonfiction’s turn. No man has ever won the prize. The winner will be announced at the…
-
Was It Pushed Or Did It Fall?
Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment By Stephen Kotkin, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross Modern Library, 197 pages, $24 There is no Freedom Without Bread: 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down Communism By Constantine Pleshakow Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 289 pages, $26 In the cascade of nostalgic…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture On the northwest side of Chicago, my old Jewish neighborhood may soon live on in infamy
- 2
Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
- 3
Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
- 4
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Zohran Mamdani once said mayoral candidates should pledge to boycott Israel. Now that he’s running, he’s not so forthcoming.
-
News CAMERA, pro-Israel media watchdog, fires longtime CEO, spurring public acrimony
-
Yiddish אַ קורס וועגן די ייִדישע דיאַלעקטן אינעם אַלטן ייִשובֿA course about the Yiddish dialects of the ‘Old Yishuv’
דער ירושלימער ייִדיש שטאַמט פֿון ליטוויש ייִדיש בעת דער צפֿתער ייִדיש שטאַמט פֿון אוקראַיִניש ייִדיש.
-
Opinion Don’t be grateful two hostages’ bodies were recovered. Be furious.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
