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
-
December 28, 2007
100 Years Ago in the forward Over the past few weeks, there has been a man, known in the press as “Jack the Ripper,” who has a penchant for cutting off pieces of women’s clothing on the Brooklyn-Manhattan subway line. This week, Samuel Buchbinder, a suspender maker from Brownsville, was riding the subway into work…
-
Film & TV ADL ‘Accepts’ Will Smith’s Clarification, JDL Supports Writers’ Strike
So the Anti-Defamation League has finally weighed in on L’Affaire Will Smith, and, I have to say, its statement is a little disappointing. To recap: Will Smith, speaking off the cuff to a Scottish newspaper, suggested — quite reasonably — that Hitler was driven by a “twisted” notion of what he thought was “good.” The…
-
Yid Vid: Chabon Speaks
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon speaks about the controversy surrounding his book “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” how he feels about Israel, getting compared to Philip Roth and being a geek. Crackerjack Judeo-Christian reporter Brad Greenberg asks all the right questions (although I do sort of wish he had asked Chabon whether he loves his wife…
The Latest
-
Film & TV Will Smith Is No Hitler-Lover (and Will Someone Please Get TMZ.com a Subscription to the Forward)
In October, it was Halle Berry. She found herself in the celebrity hot seat, apologizing profusely following an innocent, if clumsy, remark that only the most hysterical among us would view as evidence of antisemitism. This month, apparently, it’s Will Smith’s turn. In a rambling interview published in Scotland’s Daily Record, Smith was quoted as…
-
Keeping It in the Family
Who by Fire, Who by Blood By Jon Papernick Exile Editions, 346 pages, $26.95. The Jewish season of repentance is intended to broaden feelings of guilt — from daily activities to a smorgasbord of global and personal actions over the year that has passed. The world is not independent of us; we make it what…
-
Bad Girls: Burlesque Show Puts Jewish Women in the Spotlight
Jewish burlesque seems, in a way, only natural. Sex and humor are inextricably bound in Jewish culture (or at least in certain precincts of it); potty-mouthed, voluptuous women are celebrated. The burlesque tradition took root in the Yiddish theater nearly a century ago when Jewish thespians, not content to be restrained by a single medium,…
-
Israeli Plays Open Windows
Late last month, leading theater artists, producers and critics from 23 countries arrived in Tel Aviv for a six-day festival of Israeli plays. Organized by the Institute of Israeli Drama, the IsraDrama Festival brought together these international guests to attend productions, lectures and symposia on Israeli theater and to build future artistic collaborations. “So often…
-
Hautzig’s Incredible Journey
As the floorboards creak in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the lilting voice of a Jewish émigré glides over the piano and carpets in his home above the city. Walter Hautzig, a world-renowned pianist who was born in Austria, began his 65-plus-year career as a child in Vienna, where his father and grandfather…
-
Thinking Green: It’s Not Just a Virtue — It’s Your Jewish Duty
The rhetoric of Jewish environmentalism has long been kind and gentle. Like much of American environmentalist talk, it accentuates the positive: what we can do, how you can help. This is Left-Wing Activism 101: Fight despair, and don’t alienate anyone. And it’s abetted, in both secular and Jewish contexts, by the propensity of tree-hugging liberals…
-
Think ‘Fast’
Tantalizingly brief is a note from an e-mailer who identifies himself only as “Brodetzky,” no first name given. It says: “‘Mach gich!’ was my command to a platoon of German soldiers that had ambushed my battalion’s advance to the Rhine River in March 1945. We had outflanked and ambushed the ambushers, but they did not…
-
Film & TV Borat, R.I.P.?
Will we be seeing much more of Borat, Sacha Caron Cohen’s uproariously un-P.C. Kazakh journalist character? It seems unlikely, judging from an interview that Baron Cohen gave to The Daily Telegraph. “When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Fast Forward First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 3
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 4
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The Gaza hostage crisis could forever change how American Jews relate to Israel — but it’s not too late to fix that
-
Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
-
Yiddish World Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
-
Culture We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
