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
-
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
-
Jacob Gordin, Man and Myth
Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin By Beth Kaplan Syracuse University Press, 304 pages, $24.95. The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America By Jacob Gordin Translated by Ruth Gay Yale University Press, 171 pages, $32.50. In the body of lore surrounding the Yiddish stage, a historical narrative jam-packed with…
-
Hungry for Home
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love By Lara Vapnyar Pantheon, 160 pages, $20. Ernest Hemingway once called the stomach “the premier seat of the emotions,” which may explain why people often seek to mitigate adversity by indulging in food. One might expect that the lonely immigrant stomach would be especially sensitive, and indeed,…
The Latest
-
Visiting Fidel’s Infidels: Ruth Behar’s Return to the Cuban Home She Never Knew
An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba By Ruth Behar, with photographs by Humberto Mayol Rutgers University Press, 288 pages, $29.95. It is hard to begin a book with a section of “blessings for the dead,” but then it is hard to hail from a community that one never really knew much about. In…
-
From Frankfurt to New Haven
A Scholar’s Tale: Intellectual Journey of a Displaced Child of Europe By Geoffrey Hartman Fordham University Press, 160 pages, $24.95. Memoirs of displacement often trace shadows cast by the world departed onto the world gained. In his new autobiography, literary theorist Geoffrey Hartman outlines in just this way the lasting effects on his life of…
-
Glimpsing the World of Holocaust Memoir
What exactly is “personal history”? Is it a cousin of political history, cultural history or revisionist history — an account steeped in perspective before objective truth — or is it just a fancy term for “memoir”? With a spate of memoirs-turned-fiction rattling book stalls, the Holocaust chronicles, published this year, chosen for review this week…
-
May 30, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The tefillin trade in Warsaw is in an uproar after it was discovered that a set sold in the city was not only lacking the scriptures, which normally sit inside the housing, but also contained a tiny crucifix instead. Initially, this set of tefillin was thought to be one…
-
Unterzakhn, Part 12
Read this week’s installment of Leela Corman’s new graphic novel, “Unterzakhn,” which is being serialized in the Forward. (Or, to start at the very beginning, click here). CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW
-
Reassembling the Balkan Puzzle
Monastir Without Jews: Recollections of a Jewish Partisan in Macedonia By Jamila Andjela Kolomonos Edited by Robert Bedford Translated by Isaac Nehama and Brian Berman The Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, 160 pages, $18.95. In the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, the cityscapes are dotted with evidence of the wanderers, invaders…
-
The Ambivalent Reporter
The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siècle Europe By Paul Reitter The University of Chicago Press, 256 pages, $35. Modern journalism, especially as practiced in America, utilizes what is perhaps the most stifling literary form ever conceived outside of metric poetry. In our daily papers we have reduced our attempts at instantaneous history…
-
The Yiddishe Mame of Feminism
Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine L. Rose, Early Women’s Rights Leader Edited by Paula Doress-Worters The Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 328 pages, $18.95. That the great foremothers of feminism, the first wave of the movement, included in their midst an outspoken Polish Jew is not a fact…
-
Just Say ‘Nu?’: Food and Drink
The main problem with eating all the time is that it can get in the way of talking. Contrary to popular belief, Yiddish-speakers aren’t obsessed with food; they’re obsessed with talking about food, especially what’s wrong with it: it’s the memory of food that attracts them. Much like bores who haunt cocktail parties, telling you…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 3
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 4
News Why Zohran Mamdani believes he’ll win over Jewish voters, as Israel critic surges to second behind Cuomo in NYC mayoral race
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Is Israel really going to reoccupy Gaza? Ask Trump
-
Yiddish World A photo of my bubbe when Jewish stores still had Yiddish signs
-
Fast Forward Zohran Mamdani gets photo-ops — and attacks — after meeting with Orthodox voters
-
Fast Forward Israel adopts plan to conquer and occupy Gaza, in a shift for war’s goals
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
