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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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The Hyperbolic Philanthropy of James Simon
James Simon (1851–1932), a Jewish cotton magnate from Berlin, was a museum benefactor of such magnitude that his current obscurity is astounding at best and a scandal at worst. As his biography finally emerges from anonymity, so does one story of the Jewish philanthropy that made Berlin a cultural capital. And Berlin museums are hoping…
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For Ostricher And Poorer
Things are so grim these days, I can’t help wondering whether we might find a measure of comfort in history. It’s not a matter of learning from the past — have we ever? — so much as taking heart from the ways in which the human spirit has managed, over time, to prevail amid crushing…
The Latest
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To Bug and Be Bugged
Annoyance and botheration are never as well expressed as in Yiddish. Here are a few useful idioms. HAK MEER NISHT KA’ TSHAYnik Don’t knock me a tea kettle [i.e., stop rattling on like a kettle that’s boiling dry]. VOOS DRIKstee MEER A KRIZH FIN DAIM? Why are you pressing me in the small of the…
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A Baker’s Dozen: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Doughnut
Hanukkah is over, but not your queries about it. Benzion Ginn writes: “In living through my 84th Hanukkah, I remain stymied by my inability to find an answer to my question concerning the source, origin, derivation, and significance of the word *sufganiyot. *Your skill at rooting out such information would be warmly appreciated.” To tell…
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January 16, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward A brand-new magazine has appeared in New York’s Jewish quarter. Called the Shabbos Journal, it’s brought to you by what is known as the Organization of Shabbos Supporters. The purpose of the magazine is to promote the keeping of Shabbos among the Jews of the Lower East Side. What’s…
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Inner Fire, Outer Ice: The Willful Magic of János Starker
Legend portrays some Hungarian-Jewish musicians as belligerent extroverts, like the late conductors Georg Solti, nicknamed “the screaming skull” by his Chicago Symphony musicians, and George Szell, dubbed “Doctor Cyclops” by his Cleveland Orchestra ensemble. Yet, the mighty cellist János Starker, born in 1924 to a Hungarian-Jewish family in Budapest, has always looked impassive, in total…
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Painter of the Caribbean
Belisario: Sketches of Character By Jackie Ranston The Mill Press, 432 pages, $120. Jewish families who trace their roots back to England, Spain, Portugal and beyond have distinguished themselves for generations as merchants and financiers in the Caribbean. Reminders of the contributions they have made to the varied cultures and societies of the region can…
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Two Minority Reports From 1948
1948: A Soldier’s Tale — The Bloody Road to Jerusalem By Uri Avnery, translated by Christopher Costello Oneworld Press, 400 pages, $19.95. The First Tithe By Israel Eldad, translated by Zev Golan Gefen, 420 pages, $24.95. For better or for worse, the shadows of 1948 still hang over half the world as reminders of what…
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The Return of Menachem Mendel
In a period of economic hardship, such as the one our country has entered, I find myself turning to Sholom Aleichem for consolation. His characters, particularly Tevye the Dairyman and hapless stock investor Menachem Mendel, suffer serious financial losses in Sholom Aleichem’s stories. But the author responds to their condition with great humor, and provides…
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Art, Truth, Beauty in Schapiro’s Letters
Meyer Schapiro Abroad: Letters to Lillian and Travel Notebooks Edited by Daniel Esterman Getty Publications, 280 pages, $39.95 The much-beloved art historian Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996), born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, immigrated with his family to New York when he was a toddler. In his decades of varied research, on subjects from Romanesque art to Picasso, from…
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Martyrology
Had I been there, I would not have entered the Mumbai Jewish Center. I am invisible there. Worse, the rabbi was trained not to see the likes of me. He would have welcomed someone I’m not. Always, the Nagid says, when you most expect it. I warned my son to watch for the mobs of…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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Music Jill Sobule was as much a Jewish icon as a queer one
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