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
-
Film & TV
‘Over the Hill’ at 24?
If you’re Orthodox and female and live on the Upper West Side, how old do you have to be to qualify as “over the hill”? “If you’re not married, let’s say, by the age of 24, 25, there’s something wrong with you,” explained one of the talking heads featured in the trailer of J.J. Adler’s…
-
Genesis Continues
Those who accuse the French arts world of lacking a moral compass should consider the magnetic north of Ariane Mnouchkine. Her Parisian avant-garde ensemble, Théâtre du Soleil (Theater of the Sun), has just completed a short engagement at New York’s [Lincoln Center Festival]( An invitation that recognized both her current virtuosity and her achievements over…
-
‘Zion, Shall You Not Beseech’
The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimage By Raymond P. Scheindlin Oxford University Press, 328 pages, $45.00. The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167 – 1900 By Adam Shear Cambridge University Press, 400 pages, $90.00. A heady era of student activism permeated my undergraduate years at McGill University in the early…
The Latest
-
A Bubbling Font of Creativity
Despite its ubiquity, type design is easy to overlook; it’s the meaning of words that usually matters, not their appearance. But for Oded Ezer, an Israeli artist and type designer, typography lends a whole other life to language. In his work, which has appeared in museums and won design competitions worldwide, letters aren’t static symbols…
-
July 31, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward Tisha B’Av is typically a time when Jews go to cemeteries to remember their dead and to mourn the tragedy of the destroyed Temples in Jerusalem. It was no different this year, when some 5,000 Jews descended on Brooklyn’s Washington Cemetery. But as the mourners stood at their ancestors’…
-
Sex and the Shoah, Through Survivor and Sons
‘Death in Love” is both gross and engrossing. The 44-year-old New York-born director of “Remember the Titans,” Boaz Yakin, wrote, produced and directed this Holocaust-related film in a deliberately provocative way. This is the second time that the former yeshiva student has attempted a Jewish subject. “A Price Above Rubies” brought mixed reviews from critics…
-
High-Tech and Haimish
Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America By Jeffrey Shandler New York University Press, 341 pages, $75.00. Recently, in pursuit of a story about Christians who have become interested in Judaism, I stumbled across QualityLifeNow, an outreach program organized by a pair of genial Lubavitcher Hasidim. Every Wednesday evening in midtown Manhattan, these…
-
Stop Talking out of Your Nose
Shelly Jacobson writes: My husband grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family in Brooklyn. Recently, I used the word *fumfah, *thinking this meant someone who made a big or embarrassing error in speech. I didn’t think it was Yiddish — it was just a made-up word to me. But my husband says it definitely is Yiddish…
-
Odessa
My father promises me That one day we will Flee the shtetl To Odessa. We will delight in Chocolate shoppes on Baroque squares. We will pass icon-laden Burnt-brown churches Topped by cerulean blue Onion domes. The harbor on the inland sea Filled with tall-masted frigates Will beckon like the Sirens. I will rise above the…
-
Offbeat Israel: Sex Gum, Sports and the Separation Wall
Hamas has come up with some pretty bizarre conspiracy theories about Israel, but this one surpasses them all. Israel is bringing aphrodisiac chewing gum in to the Gaza Strip in order to corrupt its residents. Of course, encouraging Gazans to hook up and make more little Gazans is clearly an integral part of Israel’s strategy…
-
A Horse! A Horse! My Horse for a Theater!
On cold winter New York nights in the late 1990s, Erez Ziv could be seen driving a horse-driven carriage and smiling as big as the moon. A rare Israeli among the otherwise Irish population, he excelled at the act he performed for tourists seeking romantic turns in the park or through Times Square. Regaling them…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
- 2
News Analysis: As Democrats unite behind Platner, Schumer’s future as leader faces tests
- 3
Opinion I’m an Orthodox student in NYC. I’m grateful Mamdani vetoed the school buffer bill
- 4
News Protesters picket Manhattan synagogue over Israel real estate sale, testing Mamdani and new law
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish װערטער װאָס ראַטעװען: ירמיהו אַהרן טאַובס נײַ ביכל לידערWords of rescue: Yermiyahu Ahron Taub’s new book of poetry
באַזונדערש רירנדיק דאָ זײַנען די בילדער פֿון משפּחה־רײַבונגען, פֿון באַגעגענישן װאָס ברענגען נישט צו קײן עמאָציאָנעלע פֿאַרשטענדיקונגען.
-
Fast Forward Israel, US condemn Belgium over planned prosecutions tied to Jewish circumcisions
-
Fast Forward Rutgers disinvites commencement speaker over tweet claiming Israelis ‘train dogs to sexually assault prisoners’
-
Fast Forward Brussels cathedral installs plaques apologizing for medieval antisemitic persecution depicted in stained glass