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
-
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,…
-
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…
The Latest
-
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…
-
I Found It at the Movies
In 1965, Pauline Kael published “I Lost It at the Movies,” an anthology of her reviews and essays for The New Yorker. As I look back, her title should be inverted to define my own experience: I Found It at the Movies. I owe my passion for films to my father. He is a devotee…
-
Jewish Poetry Gets Its Breakout Star
Last News of Mr. Nobody By Emmanuel Moses Handsel Books, 168 pages, $17. Over the past five years, the vacant space of contemporary Jewish literature slowly began filling up with such names as Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Gary Shteyngart. Then came others: Myla Goldberg, Nessa Rappaport, David Bezmozgis. Yet, curiously, all these, and…
-
Bush Vote: Boom or Bust?
As President Bush waged his campaign for a second term, Jewish Republicans looked to 2004 as their banner year. After seven decades of Democratic domination, these GOP activists were promising significant gains in the Jewish vote. During much of the year leading up to the election, they insisted that President George W. Bush’s support among…
-
Swimmers Who Made Their Mark –– Out of the Pool
In the summer of 1936, as the world’s greatest athletes convened in Berlin for their quadrennial competition, the Austrian contingent was lacking its champion swimmer, a young woman who had broken 12 national records that year. The athletic entourages of all the countries of the world streamed past the viewing stand in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium,…
-
Muselmann in the Camps
Marvin Friedman of San Francisco would like to know the source of the word “Muselmann” as used by inmates of the Nazi death camps to describe their fellow prisoners who had given up all hope and thus lapsed into a state of despairing apathy. “I know,” he writes, “that the word literally means ‘Muslim’ in…
-
December 31, 2004
100 Years Ago • Sam Fefferman ran a dry goods store on New York City’s Orchard Street. Things were going well for him and he decided to expand. Therefore he hired one Mendel Frucht to stand outside his store with a pushcart. For this he paid Frucht $8 per week. Fefferman’s business continued to succeed….
-
Behind the Scenes and on the Mic
Jews have a long history in hip hop and much to be proud of — both behind the scenes and on the microphone. The presence is especially significant on the business side of things: For many years, Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest and Slick Rick were all managed by Lyor Cohen, who went on to…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
- 2
Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
- 3
Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
- 4
Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Looking Forward When the 92nd Street Y was a hub for Black innovation in dance
-
Music He may be country music royalty, but his heart belongs to Leonard Cohen
-
News Amid Jerusalem’s Flag March, police remove activists aiding Palestinians
-
Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement