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
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Preschoolers Get a Head Start in Hebrew
Los Angeles – Jewish day-school educators have long been flummoxed by the fact that, despite their best efforts to teach Hebrew, the vast majority of students graduate with little grasp of the language. In this city, that story is finally changing. Some four years since the launch of a pilot program to teach Hebrew at…
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New Curriculum Shines Spotlight On the Torah’s Heroic Women
When the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance wanted to see more women included in Orthodox day-school lessons, the group started at the beginning — the very beginning. JOFA’s gender-sensitive curriculum, titled “Bereishit: A New Beginning,” focuses on the matriarchs in the Book of Genesis. Intended to supplement, not supplant, existing day-school curricula, “Bereishit” is now being…
The Latest
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Day Schools Seek Solutions to Leadership Crisis
First, the good news: The number of students in Jewish day schools has risen 11% nationwide in the past five years, and 83 new schools have opened their doors in the same period. Now the bad news: There are not enough heads of school to lead these educational institutions. Across the religious spectrum, Jewish day…
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Agency’s CEO Brings His Ideas to Think Tank
After two decades as president and chief executive officer of the Jewish Education Service of North America, Jonathan Woocher is taking a new position this month as the organization’s chief ideas officer. Woocher will also become the director of the Lippman Kanfer Institute, Jesna’s recently founded think tank. The Jewish community has “a lot of…
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Jewish Studies Take Off, North of the Border
‘Thirty years ago, the Jewish community of Canada was not a subject for winning tenure at a university,” said Ira Robinson, professor of Judaic studies at Montreal’s Concordia University. Now, all over Canada, scholarly journals, academic conferences, university institutes and endowed professorships are cropping up around a subject that might have seemed parochial a generation…
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Ladino Professor Keeps a Language — and Her Heritage — Alive
Among the hundreds of panels convened at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in San Diego last month was the impishly titled “Is Ladino Dead Yet?” The panelists came from wildly divergent backgrounds and scholarly orientations, but on the central question of whether or not the Sephardic language has expired, their answer was a unanimous…
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Group Teaches Teenage Girls Positive Messages
Rosh Hodesh, the monthly Jewish celebration of the new moon, has a special significance for teenage girls around the country. “Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing!” is a program designed to counter the onslaught of negative messages broadcast to American girls through the media, using monthly group meetings to strengthen adolescent girls’ Jewish identity and…
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Shoah Survivor Funds Professorship in Holocaust Studies at Queens College
Queens College, part of the City University of New York, recently announced the endowment of a professorship focusing on Holocaust studies. And the man responsible for funding the position, 93-year-old William Ungar, knows about the Holocaust firsthand. Ungar, who grew up in Poland, survived a concentration camp but lost much of his family, including his…
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Israeli, Palestinian Students Talk ‘Face to Face’
Although Avi Gordis has lived in Jerusalem since he was 9, he had never had a conversation with a Palestinian until last year. “I was afraid of every Palestinian I saw,” Gordis, 17, told the Forward. That changed last summer, when the Face to Face/Faith to Faith Program brought Gordis together with Saleh Alzjary, a…
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The Graphic (Novel) Side of Israel
Pizzeria Kamikaze By Etgar Keret and Asaf Hanuka Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger Alternative Comics, 100 pages, $14.95. Exit Wounds By Rutu Modan Drawn & Quarterly, 160 pages, $19.95. One of my fondest memories of the year I recently spent in Israel is of walking through the street fair on Emek Refaim, in Jerusalem’s…
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Jesse Owens, Man and Myth at the 1936 Olympics
Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics By Jeremy Schaap Houghton Mifflin, 256 pages, $24. Hitler’s snub of sprinter Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is well known: Unwilling to recognize a black runner’s prowess, the story goes, Hitler refused to acknowledge Owens after the American athlete won the 100-meter dash….
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News An Alabama millionaire offered Jews $50,000 to move to his town. 16 years later, what’s left?
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Culture Why is Israel’s attack on Iran called ‘Rising Lion’ — and what does the Bible have to do with it?
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News ‘Very misguided’: ADL regional board member resigns over organization’s approach to antisemitism and civil rights
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News As Israel attacks, what is life like for Jews in Iran?
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Trump defers Iran attack decision; Iranian foreign minister rejects talks unless Israel stops bombing
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Culture Otto Frank’s refugee file, a Rothschild Talmud and a menorah bong tell the story of the Jewish past — and future
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Fast Forward Edan Alexander, freed from Hamas captivity after 584 days, feted on return home to New Jersey
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Antisemitism Decoded The far-right is saying Jews don’t serve in the military — they’re wrong
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