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
-
In the Presence of Genius
New and Selected Poems (1965-2006) By David Shapiro The Overlook Press, 240 pages, $21.95. What is there to say? Prodigious, brilliant, David Shapiro has lived in many worlds of art, including music and painting. Shapiro is also the author of four books of criticism: on poet John Ashbery, and on artists Jim Dine, Jasper Johns…
-
Who’s Your Daddy?
l Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel By Theodore W. Jennings Jr. Continuum, 288 pages, $26.95. For most people, what the Bible says about homosexuality begins and ends with two verses in Leviticus. What those verses mean is subject to interpretation, of course. Some people see them as a blanket prohibition…
-
Upside-Down Coffee
Adam Chanes of New York City, who at age 11 is probably the youngest person ever to address a query to this column, recently returned from a vacation in Israel with his parents. While he was there he asked me why, when Israelis order coffee in a café, they often ask for kaffei hafukh, which…
The Latest
-
Norman Mailer, Auteur
There is quixotic, and then there is Norman Mailer: the author of numerous best-selling loose, baggy monsters that tackle every important issue and icon of the 20th century, but also a guy who stabbed his second wife (out of six) with a penknife at a party, head-butted Gore Vidal in response to a suggestion that…
-
‘Fighting Back’
A new book “Fighting Back? Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain,” and Ghetto Warriors, a related exhibit at the Jewish Museum of London, offer a new look into British minority boxers’ fight for identity and acceptance, both in and outside the ring. Inhabiting London’s East End, a neighborhood that reeked of poverty and despair in…
-
Books Samuel Freedman on Michael Chabon’s ‘Love Letter to Exile and Dispossession’
Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon’s latest novel “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” set in an imagined Jewish homeland in Alaska, has drawn critical raves. But it also elicited a widely discussed New York Post item provocatively titled, “NOVELIST’S UGLY VIEW OF JEWS.” Barbs flung by the wildly sensationalistic Post are easy to laugh off, and Chabon…
-
July 13, 2007
100 Years Ago In the Forward A wild scissor fight took place Thursday in Samuel Leichter’s Ridge Street sweatshop. Two people were severely wounded. The fight, which began for unknown reasons, started between two tailors, Isidore Kiviat and Lou Baigel, who attacked each other with large cloth shears. Upon seeing the fight, shop owner Leichter’s…
-
Time To Bring the Forward Back Home
If you stand at the lower Manhattan corner of East Broadway and Essex on just about any spring weekend, you’ll see tour guides leading groups around the neighborhood. They follow different routes, but all come to East Broadway at some point. Once the intellectual center of immigrant Jewish life, the street still hosts a number…
-
Singer, Sung
Years ago, the director of the Hebrew school where I briefly taught in Portland, Ore., offered to introduce me to a composer she knew at Reed College. For a variety of reasons — most having to do with sloth and misanthropy — I never pursued the connection. I’ve regretted it ever since. The guy my…
-
Judging Aharon
Last March, when the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists decided to give its 2007 Pursuit of Justice Award to Aharon Barak, the recently retired chief judge of the Israeli Supreme Court, they chose a surprising colleague to present the honor: Antonin Scalia. The ceremony was held in the august interior of the Supreme…
-
A 94-Foot Retelling of Jewish History
Throughout her career, artist Ruth Weisberg has preferred to make art in series, wrestling with subjects and producing multiple works that are thematically, formally and sometimes physically connected. A frequent theme is redemption — especially how a moral or physical danger or horror can transform into a redemptive act for those involved, and for those…
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 When my children decorate for Hanukkah, I don’t just see pride. I see pluralism in action.
-
Fast Forward ‘The most Australian name’: Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach attack, embodies a nation’s grief
-
Fast Forward A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel advocate in LGBTQ spaces, is shutting down
-
Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
