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
-
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 Latest
-
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…
-
A Manifesto for the Seventh Day
The millennial institution of the Sabbath is currently experiencing something of a renaissance — or, at the very least, it’s the object of heightened attention — and not just within traditional Jewish circles. Judith Shulevitz’s recent book, “The Sabbath World” (Random House), a richly textured interrogation of its meaning and history, has made the rounds…
-
My Jewish-Muslim Father-in-Law
Mahmud Nasir is a Pakistani Muslim whose passion growing up in Britain during the 1980s was for New Romantic music and, to judge by his love of Tottenham Hotspur, football. He is barely observant, and once wrote a letter to the local paper, arguing that fellow Muslims ought to follow the path of moderation. But…
-
Etiquette for Schmucks, Schlemiels, Schlimazels and Schmendriks
Last week’s column, a reply to a reader’s query about the Yiddish word mentsh, invoked Michael Wex’s 2009 book, “How To Be a Mentsh (& not a Shmuck).” Today, we return to the second half of Wex’s title, spurred by Paramount Pictures’ announcement of the release, this summer, of a new comedy directed by Jay…
-
The Right Man in the Wrong Job
Future Tense: Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-first Century By Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Schocken Books, 304 pages, $26.95 Another Way, Another Time: Religious Inclusivism and the Sacks Chief Rabbinate By Meir Persoff Academic Studies Press, 450 pages, $65 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, is…
-
A Renaissance for Belleville’s Georges Perec, Master of the Lipogram
One of France’s most daring postwar writers, perhaps best known for writing an entire novel without the letter “e” (a lipogram), French-Jewish author Georges Perec, is coming back into vogue. Two of his books were reprinted by publisher David R. Godine last year, and new interest is being taken in his Polish-Jewish roots. Perec, who…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
- 2
Sports NBA coach Steve Kerr: ‘Israel sought revenge for Oct. 7 and now 72,000 Palestinians have been killed’
- 3
Film & TV A new documentary challenges stereotypes about Orthodox Jewish women — and their wigs
- 4
News Analysis: As Democrats unite behind Platner, Schumer’s future as leader faces tests
In Case You Missed It
-
Theater Tony nominee Mark Rosenblatt’s ‘Giant’ journey began with Menachem Begin
-
Fast Forward A new Hebrew press in Berlin argues that Israel doesn’t own the language
-
Fast Forward Jewish library and Chabad near Buenos Aires attacked, Argentine Jewish advocates say
-
Fast Forward Cornell’s Jewish president clashes with students following on-campus debate about Israel