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
-
Matzo on the Merchandise Table
Ira Kaplan doth protest too much. The guitarist for indie rock band Yo La Tengo — a New Jersey trio known for their encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and for their jazzlike interplay — demurs when asked about his ties to Jewish tradition. “I’m not a practicing Jew,” Kaplan said, in an interview soon after…
-
Soldier GirI
In the comic-book frame, we can see the heroine: a squat, somewhat disheveled contrast to the smooth, self-possessed Israeli soldiers by whom she is surrounded. Her eyes, etched with a couple of ink dashes, nevertheless betray both vulnerability and alienation. Peering out of a pouchy Ashkenazic face, they seek out friendship, sex and acceptance from…
-
September 22, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward Poultry dealer Morris Frank was hauling a large truckload of chickens in New York City from Harlem to Hester Street, to be used as kapores (sacrifices) for Yom Kippur. The overloaded truck was whizzing down Central Park West when suddenly it smashed into a trolley car at 69th Street….
The Latest
-
Blitzkrieg Flop
The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: a secret History of Jewish Punk By Steven Lee Beeber Chicago Review Press, 272 pages, $24.95. By turns entertaining and infuriating, Steven Lee Beeber’s “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s” is a study in contradictions: Rarely have so many carefully researched facts been placed in service of such deeply flawed arguments. Beeber’s basic…
-
A Jew Walks Into a Bar…
Yes, but Is It Good for the Jews? By Jonny Geller Bloomsbury, 208 pages, $15.95. “Our Pal, G-d” and Other Presumptions: A Book of Jewish Humor By Jeffry V. Mallow iUniverse, Inc. 192 pages, $16.95. Oy! The Ultimate Book of Jewish Jokes By David Minkoff St. Martin’s Press, 432 pages, $22.95. Funny is hard. Everyone…
-
Jazzing Up Ancient Texts
In 2000, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb had just moved to Boston from Israel to attend the New England Conservatory when she received a care package from her mother. In it was a copy of ShirHaShirim, one of the five scrolls that constitute the third book of the Tanach. Many believe that King Solomon, born in Jerusalem…
-
Reassessing FDR’s Legacy
In his counterfactual vision of the United States during World War II, “The Plot Against America,” Philip Roth imagines a world in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator turned America Firster and Nazi sympathizer. President Lindbergh soon signs a nonaggression pact with Hitler, and pogroms and…
-
New Book Incites Scholarly Fracas
As a book that that seeks to upend commonly held historical notions, Robert N. Rosen’s “Saving the Jews” is by its very nature a combative work. But even by Rosen’s standards, his 17th chapter is a confrontational one. It is here that he engages FDR’s detractors most directly, in language that prompted 55 scholars to…
-
The Wicked Witch and the Straw Man
The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred and the Jews By David Mamet Schocken, 208 pages, $19.95. The world of Jewish identity is a buyer’s market. Those of us who “do Jewish” for a living or as an avocation (rabbis, writers, editors, artists, organizational pros, philanthropists) know that half our audience is only half-interested, while the rest…
-
Found in Translation: A Round-up
Language, our first barrier, now also seems our last. Babel is one bookend of human communication; today’s instantaneous transmission of Babel through a baffling array of technologies is the other. Perhaps one of the oldest occupations, after the making of towers, is translation — that utopian and often invisible task of making one word mean…
-
September 15, 2006
100 Years Ago in the forward East Broadway seltzer vendor Henry Mittleman was blown to bits last week after a seltzer tank exploded in the basement of his store. Mittleman, who was working just a few feet from the tank, was thrown more than 20 feet by the blast. After he arrived at the hospital,…
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 His family was killed in Sydney. Hours later, he helped feed 600 unhoused people in LA.
-
Fast Forward Yehuda Kaploun confirmed by Senate as Trump’s antisemitism envoy
-
Holy Ground One of America’s first Jewish farms was nearly lost to history. Now these Brooklyn parents are risking everything to keep their family’s legacy alive.
-
Fast Forward Liberal Zionist groups criticize Trump administration’s travel ban on those with Palestinian Authority passports
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
