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
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Books
‘Perfidious Albion’
Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England By Anthony Julius Oxford University Press, 864 pages, $45 A monumental study of English antisemitism proves an astonishing and controversial achievement. If nothing else, “Trials of the Diaspora” is an extraordinary testament to the brilliance of its author. That Anthony Julius, a top London lawyer…
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Books A 21st-Century Schlemiel
The Ask By Sam Lipsyte Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pages, $25 He is the anti-hero of the American Jewish novel: bright, only not bright enough; more dreamy than driven, and possessed by insatiable, often misappropriated desires. He does not see himself as beholden to his Jewishness, but neither can he escape it. He was…
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Don’t Talk to the Hand
Leon Kass writes: “Perhaps you can help me with the origin of the Yiddish expression redn tsu der vant, to talk to the wall. Many languages may have such an expression to indicate the futility of efforts to persuade by speech or to gain a hearing for one’s thoughts. But given what became the secularist…
The Latest
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Jews and Animals, A Very Modern Story
I’m not a big one for animals. I never had a pet when I was growing up, not even a goldfish or a turtle, let alone a dog or a cat. But thoughts of these creatures now fill my head. It’s not that I want one — I don’t — but that I’ve come belatedly…
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Getting Sick of Sondheim?
‘But who needs Albert Schweitzer/When the lights are low?” (“Follies”) “Perpetual sunset is/Rather an unsettling thing.” (“A Little Night Music”) Who else but masterful Broadway lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim, who turns 80 on March 22, would have found those rhymes? It’s only fitting that all-star celebrations should be plentiful, like the New York Philharmonic’s…
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We Will Not Stop Dancing
Last August a gunman entered the Aguda building in Tel Aviv and opened fire on the crowd at Bar Noar, a safe space for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth. He killed two and wounded a number of others before escaping without trace or identification. Two of the wounded, 15-year-old “Alef” and 19-year-old “Yud” (names…
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March 12, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward The saga of the four Jewish bakers who were attacked recently by anti-union thugs outside Messing’s Bakery on Allen Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side continues. Their hearing took place in Essex Market Court before Judge Corrigan, and the magistrate released the thugs on bail after calling for another…
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Obsessively Self-Filming His Vicissitudes
In February 2006, Israeli documentary filmmaker Tomer Heymann traveled to Berlin to present his film, “Paper Dolls,” at the Berlin International Film Festival. One evening, he went in pursuit of the nightlife for which the city is justly famous, and met Andreas Merk, a German choreographer, at the electronic music mecca, Berghain. What started as…
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Backward: A Video
[ ![][2]][2] In the spirit of Purim, Forward staffers set out to learn what New Yorkers knew about Jews. Produced and edited by Allison Gaudet Yarrow []: https://forward.com/backward-purim/
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Purim in Bulgaria – With Kaddish
During the year my husband and I lived in Sofia, Bulgaria, we joined local Jews in observing the annual cycle of religious holidays. All were memorable, but Purim was especially meaningful. In addition to hearing the Megillah’s account of how the Jews of ancient Persia were saved from death at Haman’s hand, Bulgarian Jews recall…
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Letters From Permanent Exile in Argentina
The poetry of Juan Gelman bears urgent witness to the bankruptcy of Argentine morality. Rather than addressing abstract political questions, though, Gelman focuses on the small things: a handkerchief, a conversation on Carlos Gardel, the ways to remember a family moment. He thrives on exploring the quotidian aspects of life under tyranny. How do people…
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