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
-
Looking Back April 7, 2006
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD Three notorious clerks at New York City’s Grand Street Post Office have swindled thousands of Jews. The clerks, George Davidson, William Spencer and John Mahoney, were arrested last night after police were alerted to their scam — which may have been going on for years. They would take the…
-
Allegra Goodman’s Science Fiction
Intuition By Allegra Goodman The Dial Press, 352 pages, $25. * * *| In her new novel, “Intuition,” Allegra Goodman invokes the world of medical research with the convincing detail of an insider and an outsider’s penetrating gaze. The book is a modern epic, a slimmed-down, suspenseful version of one of the 19th-century classics: a…
-
A Road Trip Through the Mideast Conflict
When he’s at his best, Israeli auteur Amos Gitai captures the peculiar pain, and paradox, of individuals filled with national yearning. What a person needs from a country and what a country needs from a person should not on its face have reason to overlap, and Gitai is obsessed with why — and what happens…
The Latest
-
Sweet’N Lowdown
Benjamin Eisenstadt’s obituary in The New York Times called him “a sweetener of lives,” for he invented not only the individual sugar packet but also the zero-calorie cash cow Sweet’N Low. In his new book, “Sweet and Low: A Family Story” (to be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Eisenstadt’s grandson, Rich Cohen…
-
Greener Pastures; or How The Israelites Found God
The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures By Daniel Hillel Columbia University Press, 376 pages, $32.50. * * *| As an idyll of pastoral serenity, the 23rd Psalm has few peers. It begins with familiar and comforting words: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes…
-
The Goddess Matriarchy
Barry Dancis writes: “I recently began reading the book ‘When God Was a Women’ by Merlin Stone, written some 30 years ago. In it she points out that Near Eastern societies from 9000 BCE or thereabouts to 2500 BCE or somewhat later revered a supreme female deity or goddess (Astarte, Isis, etc.), and that the…
-
Techniques Of Understanding
What are we to make of the sacrifices central to the Israelite cult described in Leviticus in such detail? The offering of “an ephah of fine flour for a meal-offering” to God can be dismissed in our mind as un-troubling, but the slaughter of animals as part of a religious ritual is much more disturbing:…
-
Episcopalian, By Way of Yiddish
Confessions of a Jewish Priest: From Secular Jewish War Refugee to Physicist and Episcopal Clergyman By Gabriel Weinreich Pilgrim Press, 177 pages, $25. * * *| ‘Yiddish has magic,” the linguist Max Weinreich once said. “It will outwit history.” But history, it turns out, also has a few tricks up its sleeve. For evidence, look…
-
Curses Show Language’s Creativity
Lita Epstein does not have a dirty mouth. Her pen, however, is filthy. Epstein’s forthcoming book, “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Say It in Yiddish” (Citadel Press), offers page after page of Yiddish insults and curses, some of which would make even the bawdiest of sailors blush. The book, due in stores next month,…
-
Looking for Inspiration in All The Wrong Places
Memoirs of a Muse By Lara Vapnyar Pantheon, 224 pages, $22.95. * * *| Tanya, the heroine of Lara Vapnyar’s first novel, “Memoirs of a Muse,” and (as far as Tanya is concerned) of numerous masterpieces yet to be created, doesn’t claim to be an expert on literature, but when it comes to choosing among…
-
Labor’s Loves Lost
Paul Buhle is a senior lecturer in history and American civilization at Brown University. A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists In New York By Tony Michels Harvard University Press, 352 pages, $27.95. * * *| The tale of Jewish socialists on Manhattan’s Lower East Side offers one of those urban legends, alive with so…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
- 2
Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens
- 3
Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
- 4
Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture The manosphere says women owe their husbands sex — Judaism says the opposite
-
Fast Forward Georgia’s Jewish senator called his newly minted GOP opponent an antisemite. Why?
-
Fast Forward Alex Bores’ supporters disagree on Israel. They agree on him.
-
Fast Forward Organizers of London Israeli real estate fair apologize after West Bank properties surface despite denials