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
-
Law School Is Brave New World for Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Women
The heat in the classroom was stifling. The students, all of them women, leaned over their notebooks like diligent sewing machine operators in a garment factory and penned rivers of words. The lecturers spoke quickly, with no interruptions and no questions. At the end of the lesson, one woman raced to the window, where she…
-
January 17, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • The birthday party for Comrade Levin’s 2-year-old daughter, which was attended by a large number of Forward employees who sang Russian revolutionary songs, was disrupted when Benjamin Belikoff drank a bottle of carbolic acid. Belikoff, who works for Levin and is also a boarder in his house, tried to bite the…
-
January 10, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • The Jews of Fez, Morocco, have been driven into a ghetto for their own protection at the behest of the city government. Apparently Muslim fanatics have been threatening the Jewish community, and the government fears that they will attack the Jews. Measures have also been taken to protect other infidel groups,…
The Latest
-
January 3, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • Kosher Jews have been busted with treyf schnapps. The police suspected that somewhere on Jerome Street in Brooklyn there was an illegal bootlegging operation, but were unable to find it. That is, until they discovered a barrel-laden wagon pulling out of No. 472. After stopping the wagon and arresting its drivers,…
-
Mapping the Contours of a ‘New Tanakh’
The Modern Jewish Canon By Ruth Wisse Free Press, 395 pages, $28. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the Yiddish writer Melekh Ravitch ignited a heated controversy in Jewish intellectual circles by calling for the redaction of a secular Jewish canon that he dubbed “a new Tanakh.” He proposed the creation of an authoritative…
-
From Yiddish to British
Writes David Chanoff of Marlboro, Mass.: “You probably know of James Kelman, the Booker Prize winner who writes in Glaswegian dialect. In his book of stories, ‘The Good Times,’ there occurs the line of dialogue, ‘Heh, I was hearing about Smiddy’s funeral, some kind of schemozzle.’” And Mr. Chanoff adds: “Meaning, apparently, something like ‘a…
Most Popular
- 1
News A pioneering Reform synagogue makes way for a booming Iranian Jewish community
- 2
News Hampshire College closure reverberates for alumni who treasured a Yiddishist hub
- 3
Opinion Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
- 4
News Iran’s regime is obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
-
Looking Forward Stumbling across Jewish history in a vintage store
-
Film & TV Remembering Siskel and Ebert’s great debate: Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?
-
News A Jewish gun club teams up with the NRA, in pursuit of self-defense
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism