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
-
The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
-
Judaism’s Green Roots
An exciting Jewish environmental movement has been developing in recent years, with its foundations firmly established in tradition and modern environmental knowledge. The latest rung in this developing ladder is the publication of a new book by Jeremy Benstein, associate director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership. “A Way Into Judaism and…
-
The Kitbag Question
Reporting on a visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to Sderot, the town near Gaza repeatedly hit by Qassam rockets, the Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz had this to say about her meeting there with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana: “In the course of a press conference…. Solana said that he understood the local…
The Latest
-
June 1, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward Socialist comrade Sol Fieldman was arrested this week on charges of disturbing the peace. He was brought before the magistrate, who ordered him held on $100 bail. Fieldman, who has relentlessly disrupted Socialist Party meetings with attempts to force his own political agenda on the party, refused to pay…
-
Dr. Ruth’s Other Interest: Ethnography
Ruth Westheimer is best known as “Dr. Ruth,” the tiny Jewish woman who dispenses sex advice in a distinctive German accent. But the renowned psychosexual therapist also happens to be an accomplished amateur ethnographer, having studied groups ranging from the Ethiopian Jews to Trobriand Islanders, often with a particular focus on family dynamics. Her latest…
-
May 25, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward A pogrom is usually thought of as something that happens to Jews in Russia. But this week, in Sioux City, Iowa, a gang attacked a number of Jewish-owned stores in the middle of the night. When Philip Rubin heard the shattering of the large, plate-glass windows of his shoe…
-
Writing in Four Dimensions
Avram Davidson was a midcentury, American writer of fantastic fiction whose imagination would inherit the galaxy, and more. His stories and novels of time travel and alternate universes transcended almost everything earthly, even as their author was bound to poverty and mainstream neglect. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction called Davidson the genre’s “most explicit literary…
-
A Birthday Celebration for Curacao’s Historic Synagogue
As evening fell in Willemstad in Curacao on April 16, scores of well-dressed people headed to the narrow Hanchi di Snoa, and into the courtyard of the Snoa — Curacao’s venerable synagogue built in 1732, home to Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas, and one where no Sabbath or major holiday…
-
Life After Death
Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life By Jon D. Levenson Yale University Press, 274 pages, $40. For many non-Orthodox Jews, the concept of the physical resurrection of the dead has always been difficult. Prayers mentioning the doctrine — including such central texts as the second paragraph of…
-
Dangerous Sport
Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 By David Clay Large W.W. Norton & Company, 416 pages, $27.95. Next year, the Summer Olympic Games will take place in Beijing. This choice of location was a controversial decision by the International Olympic Committee, owing to concerns in the West that China could use the Olympics as a…
-
Books Borat: From Silver-Screen Star to Scribe
As I watched the bonus outtakes on the DVD version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s box-office hit, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” I realized that while the Borat routine might get old in the temporal sense, it somehow never stops being funny. That’s why I was excited to read…
-
Film & TV The Jewish Sandman
The Forward has earned a reputation for uncovering the Jewish ancestry of figures both real and fictional. Comics, in particular, have been a rewarding realm of inquiry: My friend and former colleague Max Gross outed The Thing, while executive editor Ami Eden discovered an uncanny Jewish X-Men connection. So it was only natural that we’d…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Culture Is Pope Leo Jewish? Ask his distant cousins — like me
- 3
Opinion The staggering hypocrisy behind Trump’s deal to free the last living American hostage
- 4
Fast Forward Russell Brand defends Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’ music video
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture No matter whose side you’re on — Israeli or Palestinian — these sites are gonna doxx you
-
Fast Forward Antisemitic fliers thrown from car in Squirrel Hill neighborhood
-
Fast Forward Kathy Manning to lead Democratic Majority for Israel board of directors
-
Fast Forward Romanian right-wing candidate whose party called the Holocaust a ‘minor topic’ loses presidential election
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
