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
-
Art Connects Kids Halfway Around the Globe
American students and Israeli students might speak different languages, but they have learned another way to communicate: through art. Four years ago, the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the museum’s education department launched an art exchange program. Originally intended to connect students in New York and Tel Aviv, the program…
-
Fewer Orthodox Teaching in Public Schools
‘As long as there are final exams, there will always be prayer in school!” So reads the store-bought sign that hangs behind Leonard Stahl, president of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Teachers, in the organization’s modest offices in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. But the situation facing Stahl isn’t a joke: The number of Orthodox…
-
Teen Mags Put Hip Cover on Jewish Culture
The first 15,000 glossy copies of JVibe magazine shipped out to Jewish schools across the country this month. From the cover, Evan Taubenfeld, the dirty-blonde guitarist for pop singer Avril Lavigne, peers out coolly at teenage Jewish readers. The teen magazine is the latest product from the mini-media empire known as Jewish Family & Life,…
The Latest
-
Judaic Studies Department Faces Cutbacks at Brandeis University
Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., has been the site of a series of aggrieved faculty and student meetings in recent weeks, after the dean of arts and sciences proposed cutting faculty from a number of programs, including the signature Near Eastern and Judaic studies department. Dean Adam Jaffe proposed the cuts to make room for…
-
Columbia, JTS Mark Half a Century of Partnership
The Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University celebrated the 50th anniversary of their joint undergraduate program this past November, prompting administrators and students past and present to toast half a century of fruitful collaboration between Conservative Judaism’s flagship institution and New York City’s sole Ivy League school. JTS Chancellor Ismar Schorsch called the dual degree…
-
YIVO Opens Internet Portal to the Past
Ever wonder what it was like to walk down Lubartovska Street in the Polish city of Lublin in 1937? Or what a Jewish self-defense group in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa looked like in 1918? Or how a kindergarten music class in a Lithuanian Jewish school sounded 70 years ago? A new curriculum targeted…
-
Honoring the Hustlers of the Record Business
Machers and Rockers: Chess Records And the Business of Rock & Roll By Rich Cohen W.W. Norton, 220 pages, $22.95. * * *| I admire Rich Cohen’s writing, but I also admire his project. Cohen’s proj- ect, in all his books, is to talk about Jews neither poor nor rich. These Jews, they got out…
-
Music From the World’s Kosher Kitchens
A Wandering Feast By Yale Strom And Elizabeth Schwartz Jossey-Bass, 272 pages, $24.95. ——– In 1981, when Yale Strom undertook his first journey to Central and Eastern Europe, you couldn’t use the word klezmer without having to pause to explain it. The klezmer revival was still gathering steam when Strom attended a concert that inspired…
-
A Slew of New CDs To Take Into 2005
Madonna is probably the world’s most famous quasi-Jewish musician. Next time she goes on tour, she might consider bringing along some of the following artists, thus allowing her star to cast some rays of light on them and to do for contemporary Jewish music what she’s done for her friends from The Kabbalah Centre. There’s…
-
Listening to Classical on the ‘Cool’ Medium
Marshall McLuhan famously termed television a “hot” medium and radio a “cool” one. The inconsistencies inherent in such artificial divisions notwithstanding, there are fundamental differences between the two. Perhaps above all, one remains the better suited to relaying, and even discussing, music. That point is made every day on radio stations throughout the world, but…
-
What Is His Name?
Two men, marked by 80 or more winters, walk in the shadow of Mount Horeb. Aaron: So all I am is some sort of glorified ventriloquist’s dummy? Moses: Well, that’s a harsh way to put it. But in a nutshell… Aaron: I’m the older brother, for crying out loud. Why do I have to be…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Exclusive Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you
- 2
Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
- 3
Opinion Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
- 4
Opinion Mahmoud Khalil’s reassurances are bad for Jews but even worse for Palestinians
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Dan Bilzerian wants to ‘kill Israelis’ and thinks Judaism is ‘terrible.’ Now he’s running for Congress.
-
Fast Forward After AIPAC-backed primary loss, Tom Malinowski endorses rival who says Israel committed genocide
-
Opinion Viktor Orbán may fall. Netanyahu should be next
-
Opinion Hungary is poised to topple an authoritarian leader. American Jews have something to learn
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
