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
-
Fields, Green Again
Although for many years it has appeared that the work of Austrian-born filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972) was destined to fall into oblivion — in one of the earliest accounts of his career, from the 1970s, film scholar John Belton pronounced Ulmer “a totally unknown or, at best, an obscure figure in film history” —…
-
A Famed Bronx Boy Looks Back
The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue: A Child of the Fifties Looks Back By Robert Klein Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, * * *| ‘I was raised on chicken soup,” comedian Robert Klein wails in one of his signature song parodies, “Middle-Class Educated Blues.” In his startlingly candid memoir, Klein reveals other, more carnal sources of nourishment…
-
Klezmer via Kingston
The postcard-sized calendars strewn about the world music venue Satalla, on West 26th Street in New York City, proclaimed the band Klezska to be purveyors of “klezmer music,” which is a lot like calling turducken “stuffed turkey.” Neither description is entirely misleading. But like most labels, they hardly tell the whole story. Founded and led…
The Latest
-
An Unsung Master Offers Sorrow (and Yuks)
Almonds to Zhoof: Collected Stories By Richard Stern TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 611 pages, $29.95. By Peter Orner * * *| STERN: A new collection includes 49 short stories. In a review of Bernard Malamud’s stories, Richard Stern once called Malamud “the poet of the American depression.” Call Stern the bard of postwar American failure….
-
Balaam’s Experience
This week’s portion, on the prophet Balaam and the king of Moab, Balak, is a sort of microcosm of the Torah in that it encapsulates so many of its greatest modes and themes. Balaam’s prophetic praise-poems, rising to the most sublime heights, assert the power of God’s blessing over His chosen people in the face…
-
July 8, 2005
100 YEARS AGO • Last week, the Forward predicted that the besieged Russian battleship Potemkin would celebrate its own Fourth of July. This, in fact, happened. On July 4, the soldiers and officers of the Potemkin formed a mutiny and joined the ranks of the revolutionaries. Just as the American revolutionaries declared themselves free from…
-
An Army of One Ponders His Hunt for Israeli Oil
Oil: Israel’s Covert Efforts To Secure Oil Supplies By Zvi Alexander Gefen Books, 296 pages, $19.95. * * *| For most of his life, Zvi Alexander, a man with the guts of a gambler, was engaged in that most characteristic of Israeli pursuits: creating facts on the ground. Except in his case, these facts were…
-
Brave New World Music
Israeli musicians Tamir Muskat and Ori Kaplan want you to get up, walk over to your CD rack, pull out the world-music samplers — yes, that “Putumayo Presents: Music From the Chocolate Lands” — and pitch them into the trash. Don’t sit just yet. They have a replacement suggestion: Balkan Beat Box, their New York-based…
-
The Importance of Writing About Writing
A Mirror in the Roadway: Literature and the Real World By Morris Dickstein Princeton University Press, 320 pages, $26.95. * * *| Why write about literature? The answer isn’t money, fame or love. Nor is it immortality, because criticism — a few exceptions notwithstanding — seldom lasts. So why? The question is posed and answered…
-
They’re Laughing at Jews in Germany
Dani Levy has tussled gray hair and a sleepy-looking face. It’s a classic Jewish face: tan skin, round features and flashes of irony in his small, dark eyes. He’s wearing a sweater and trousers and scratching his head, choosing his words carefully. As he reclines on a sofa and sips mineral water at Café Bilderbuch…
-
Capturing a Free City’s Myriad Legacies
In March, our eldest daughter took us for a walk in Tel Aviv. A tour guide and educator, she pointed out the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik’s home, located on the street that bears his name. We walked the streets of the first Hebrew speaking city, whose first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, had been part of the…
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
News Abdul El-Sayed is courting Jewish voters — without moderating his views on Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Mamdani calls AIPAC ‘monsters’ in rally ahead of NY primaries
-
Fast Forward Jewish groups push back against Trump’s Iran deal — but more quietly so far than in 2015
-
News Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
-
Culture My father was my hero and, when he was dying, I wrote this song for him