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
-
April 9, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • More than a hundred Jewish homes were destroyed in Homel during a recent pogrom. The Jews, however, led by a number of butchers, defended themselves against the pogromists and managed to wound a few. Although many Jewish businesses were destroyed, no one was killed. In a related story, word on the…
-
April 2, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • The atmosphere in Bialystock is increasingly restless following mass demonstrations against the czarist regime during which a young Jewish revolutionary shot the police commissioner. The shooter was quickly apprehended and, with the interior minister’s stamp of approval, was sentenced to death by public hanging in the middle of city’s marketplace. All…
-
March 26, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • A large number of Lower East Side tenement houses are boiling after their landlords put tenants on notice that their rent was to be raised. It’s been discussed in every Jewish tenement house, in every sweatshop and throughout the Jewish quarter, and, as a result, a massive rent strike has begun…
The Latest
-
March 19, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • A terrible commotion occurred during a performance in the American Theater after a gunman shot at some of the actors onstage from Box C. The two shots caused a panic in the packed theater. The unidentified gunman, whose motives are unknown, immediately disappeared. Coincidentally, Yiddish-theater actor and director Jacob Adler was…
-
March 12, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • A private letter has reached the Forward from St. Petersburg that describes the terrible situation that awaits those sent to the frontlines of the raging Russo-Japanese war. A large contingent of mainly Jewish doctors — who it seems were forcibly drafted — was shipped off to the front from St. Petersburg….
-
March 5, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • A number of novel scams have hit the Lower East Side in recent days. For example, a doctor showed up at the door of Mr. and Mrs. Mendel Lort of Prince Street and told the couple he had been sent by the Board of Health to determine whether the two were…
-
The Not-So-Supreme Being?
More than two decades after Harold Kushner’s “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” became a best seller, another rabbi-author has reopened the vexing question of whether divine justice exists in the universe. This time, it’s Benjamin Blech, weighing in with his book, “If God is Good, Why is the World So Bad?” (Simcha Press,…
-
POETRY FOUND
When renowned Forward cartoonist Ben Katchor’s telephone fell off his desk and smashed open, he discovered that the plastic shell of the phone was practically empty, with the exception of several small lead weights. These weights were the inspiration for his tragicomedy musical theater production “The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or The Friends of…
-
February 27, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • In a story that exemplifies the inhumanity of Russia’s antisemitism, a Jewish doctor who lived with his family in Kiev volunteered to serve in the medical corps of the Russian army, since the lack of doctors on the front in Siberia is well-known. But a Jewish family cannot live outside the…
-
HUMOR, PASSION AND KLEZMER
Trying to categorize the Rabbinical School Dropouts is no easy task. The 10-piece klezmer, funk and rock band finds its inspiration from such diverse sources as Frank Zappa, Raymond Scott, Martin Denny, Charles Mingus, Bernard Herrmann, Shostakovich, They Might Be Giants, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan. “When I write music for the…
-
February 20, 2004
100 YEARS AGO • More than 10,000 partiers streamed into Madison Square Garden one Saturday night this month to take part in the sensational Forward Masked Ball. It was incredible to look down from the packed balconies onto the dance floor, where thousands of couples danced the night away. The masks and costumes made parts…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
- 2
News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
- 3
Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
- 4
Fast Forward Talarico won’t campaign with Democratic House candidate who wants to open ‘a prison for American Zionists’
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish World Molly Crabapple’s book is well researched but ideologically biased
-
News At Trump’s Christian revival on the National Mall, one rabbi made a Jewish case for America
-
Fast Forward California judge says Kars4Kids misled donors by omitting Orthodox Jewish mission from ads
-
Fast Forward Pacific Palisades Jews, displaced by fire, reopen their synagogue as part of returning home