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
-
Yom HaShoah
Here’s the view from Jerusalem on this somber day, courtesy of Jewlicious. Here is a selection of Yom Hashoah-related news and commentary: — Speaking during a ceremony at Auschwitz, Israeli military chief-of-staff Gabi Ashkenazi says, “We have learned our lesson and we take very seriously the threats of state leaders who call for the destruction…
-
Film & TV Casting Call: Coen Bros. ISO Bar Mitzvah Boy, Nose-Job Seeker, Wise Rabbi
Minneapolis’s Star-Tribune reports that native sons made good (filmmakers), the Coen brothers, are holding a casting call at the JCC in their hometown of St. Louis Park: Their new film “A Serious Man,” about a Midwestern Jewish family in the late 1960s, will hold an open casting call to fill those roles with performers from…
The Latest
-
Unterzakhn, Part 9
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
-
Left Behind: A New Book Explores the History of Abandoned Wives
l Enforced Marginality: Jewish Narratives on Abandoned Wives By Bluma Goldstein University of California Press, 235 pages, $39.95. We would do well to remember that when we say “according to the rabbis,” we are historically saying “according to men.” According to the male rabbis who wrote the Talmud and who, for European generations, were the…
-
Mameloshn
Key to Yiddish By Miriam Hoffman National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts, Inc., 665 pages, $49.99. Every year, a new crop of students arrives at university summer programs, professing a desire to study Yiddish. While not many actually learn the language, the demand for Yiddish studies courses has been holding steady. Every year also brings…
-
High School Unmusical: A Comic Book Artist Draws Adolescence in All Its Awkward Splendor
Ariel Schrag, 28, is almost done with high school. Actually, she graduated from Berkeley High School in California a decade ago, and since then she has earned an English literature degree from Columbia University, authored or edited several books, and spent two years as a staff writer and story editor on Showtime’s hit series “The…
-
The Playless Play’s the Thing
Dan Fishback — a 27-year-old performance artist, musician, and recent winner of a significant grant — isn’t surprised when Jews reject him. After all, he is unabashedly gay, resolutely Jewish, strongly critical of Israeli policies and firmly against the Iraq War. His work presses a lot of buttons. He is also not surprised when he’s…
-
The Hardest Working Men in Soul Business
Perhaps it was inevitable that David Krakauer, the virtuosic clarinetist and klezmer artist, would team up with Fred Wesley, a funk legend who played trombone and arranged for James Brown in the 1960s and ’70s. After all, Wesley rose to stardom playing on such hits as “Super Bad,” and Krakauer continues to garner equal helpings…
-
May 2, 2008
100 Years Ago in the forward The New York City and Hoboken, N.J., police departments have an All Points Bulletin out on one Dr. Oswald Katz, who is wanted for theft, bigamy and possibly murder. After Katz’s wife, Lina Felestein Katz, died three years ago under mysterious circumstances, the doctor married a widow by the…
-
Chain Gangs
One thing about the Passover Seder that never seems to change is that battles are fought between those around the table who insist on singing every stanza of the incrementally repeating chain songs at the Haggadah’s end and those who wish to make shorter shrift of them. My father belonged to the latter camp. By…
-
Books in Brief
“Memory” By Philippe Grimbert Simon & Schuster, 176 pages, $19.95 If I had an imaginary best friend, the words I’d use to describe him or her would be long, and the conversations we would have could border on a philosophical treatise. Fortunately, Philippe Grimbert’s novel “Memory,” recently translated into English, argues a good case for…
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
Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward A Jewish nonprofit may have accidentally caused Michigan to drop charges against pro-Palestinian activists
-
Culture For Christian nationalists, Trump’s pope picture isn’t a joke
-
Opinion Is Israel really going to reoccupy Gaza? Ask Trump
-
Yiddish World A photo of my bubbe when Jewish stores still had Yiddish signs
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
