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
-
Spinoza: Hero, Infidel, Celebrity
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity By Rebecca Goldstein Nextbook/Schocken, 304 pages, $19.95. * * *| Betrayal haunts the image of 17th-century philosopher Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza like no other Jewish historical celebrity. For centuries, the name of this radical pantheist, pioneering biblical critic and defector from Judaism — once described as “the…
-
…and Muse
Conversation With Spinoza: A Cobweb Novel By Goce Smilevski Translated by Filip Korzenski Northwestern University Press, 152 pages, $16.95. * * *| A few centuries too late, it seems that Spinoza’s time has finally come. In a world in which many Jews are yet again attempting to assert a secular identity as the dialectic antipode…
-
A Painter on Earth Whose Brush Reaches the Heavens
‘I cannot imagine German culture without Judaism,” painter Anselm Kiefer said. “One thing is that Germans committed the immense crime of killing Jews. The other is that they amputated themselves. They took half of German culture and killed it.” As a result, Kiefer, who was born to Catholic parents in Donaueschingen, Germany, during the final…
The Latest
-
Fateful Correspondence
Paper Kisses: A True Love Story By Reinhard Kaiser Translated by Anthea Bell Other Press, 120 pages, $13.95. * * *| Like Reinhard Kaiser, the author of “Paper Kisses” — a true, epistolary tale of two star-crossed lovers during the Holocaust — my father was a collector of stamps. And like Kaiser, his hobby was…
-
Magen David: Shield or Star?
Chalk up a victory for the Star of David — or, as it is called in Hebrew, the magen David or “Shield of David.” Long boycotted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which refused to grant Israel’s “Red Shield of David” organization membership in its ranks because it did not recognize the medical…
-
Korah; or, the Possibility of Change
This week’s Torah portion, Korah, tells a spectacular story of rebellion and punishment. Korah challenges Moses and Aaron’s rule with a deceptively simple argument: “All of the community is holy.… What makes you so special that you raise yourselves up?” (Numbers 16:3) Coming as it does from his very own tribe, Moses falls into despair….
-
Ethical Designs
You don’t need to be enrolled in art school to know that the philosophies of green design and smart design are becoming, in many circles, the only acceptable way to build anything from an apartment building to a pair of shoes. With social and environmental responsibility at the forefront of the minds of most contemporary…
-
What We Know, and Don’t, About Eichmann
Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, And Trial of a ‘Desk Murderer’ By David Cesarani Da Capo Press, 464 pages, $27.50. * * *| Most of what we know – or think we know – about Adolf Eichmann, a notorious Nazi functionary, may be wrong. Or so readers will surmise from “Becoming Eichmann,” David Cesarani’s…
-
Klezmer in the East Looks to the West for Guidance
Midway through its hauntingly minimalist performance on the opening night of Moscow’s second-annual klezmer festival, the vocal quartet Ashkenazim took a dramatically long pause to introduce the song “Dem Shokhens Meydl.” The group’s tenor, Alina Ivakh, explained that song is an allegorical tale of two young pioneer girls — the Soviet version of Girl Scouts…
-
Jewish Mobsters Amble From Text to the Panel
With 8 million stories in the Jewish naked city, artists Joe Kubert, Neil Kleid and Jake Allen have given us two riveting ones. With the growing interest in graphic novels and the pictorial evocation of historical events, it’s not surprising that more and more Jewish tales are ending up in panels instead of in type….
-
Immersion in Reality
The mikveh attendant in a town where I often visit but do not live was always the same: towheaded, horsy wig, vast muumuu, thick accent and brusque, brusque, brusque. Her job was to assist women preparing for ritual immersion in observance of the ambitiously named Laws of Family Purity. Assistance is necessary because these laws,…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
- 2
News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
- 3
Exclusive Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you
- 4
Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis
-
Fast Forward Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran
-
Opinion Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
-
Culture Ben Lerner’s tale of three hotels is a lyrical novel of loss and human potential
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
