Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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The Jewish mentor Sidney Poitier never got to thank
Sidney Poitier, the Oscar-winning actor, director and civil rights icon who died today at 94, often credited a more obscure figure for his success: an old Jewish waiter. When Poitier was a newly-arrived Bahamian in Queens, N.Y., washing dishes at a restaurant, and hoping to make it as an actor, he would bring newspapers to…
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How a forgotten Sidney Poitier film helps explain our current political moment
Editor’s Note; Sidney Poitier had died at the age of 94. As we mark that occasion, we look back at this article about the actor, author, and civil rights activist’s first film. It is a tribute to the civil rights movement and its recent incarnation as Black Lives Matter that, according to recent polls, a…
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Yiddish porn, Einstein’s letters and Rabbi Schneerson’s sermons united in ‘largest single remnant of Jewish life’ in Europe
In 2014, Jonathan Brent discovered something he didn’t know he was missing. Walking into the Wroblewski Library in Vilnius, he saw a long table covered with boxes. Inside were documents belonging to the organization he heads, YIVO, the Institute for Jewish research, which was founded in Vilna and moved its operations to New York in…
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A beloved book, a classic Italian film and now, a disturbingly timely opera
“The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” had what its creators call a “difficult birth.” Over a decade in the making, the opera, adapted from Giorgio Bassani’s book of the same name, which Vittorio De Sica made into an Oscar-winning 1970 film, was meant to be a part of the Minnesota Opera’s 2011 and then 2013 season….
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How a film lover from Kingston, New York, grew up to be the inimitable Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich, the bandana-throated, Oscar-nominated director-writer who was a bridge figure between New Hollywood and the Hollywood Golden Age has died at 82. Encompassing such classics as “The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon” and “What’s Up, Doc?” Bogdanovich’s career ranged from intimate dramas to broad screwball comedies. He later charmed new audiences as Dr. Melfi’s…
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At long last, premium Israeli whisky is here — was it worth the wait?
I’ve never anticipated a dram of whisky as much as the Milk & Honey APEX Dead Sea. I was waiting for over eight years for them to set up the stills, mature the whisky and send me samples but, even after ordering, I spent nearly two months hitting the refresh button to track my arriving…
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How one far-right platform has weaponized antisemitism and Christian extremism to foment insurrection
In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Twitter deplatformed Trump for inciting violence and cracked down on other users. Amazon kicked conservative social media site Parler off of its servers for failing to police extremist conversation. And in the wake of the insurrection, membership of Gab, which has long been a home for far-right…
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Jackie Mason — my cameo role in his comedy success story
It was the 1980s. Jackie was at the height of his career, performing all over the world to rave reviews. There was no one else like him. If he so chose, he could destroy you with only two words. My friend Paul Herzich, who was deeply affected by Jackie’s 1963 album, “I’m the Greatest Comedian…
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Lucille Ball may have prevailed over censorship, but on Dick Van Dyke’s show, it was another story
While I was watching “Being the Ricardos,” Aaron Sorkin’s film that dramatizes Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s feud with CBS over showing the star of “I Love Lucy” pregnant, I was reminded of the stifling censorship that existed when I broke into television writing. Even 20 years after the events depicted in the movie had…
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I am begging you all to please shut up about the Harry Potter Jew-goblins
Jon Stewart has everyone talking about whether goblins in Harry Potter are a Jewish stereotype. Thinking they are antisemitic is... antisemitic
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A ‘vaguely Jewish’ director confronts a vexing Jewish dilemma in a specifically Jewish play
The stage director David Cromer once described himself as “vaguely Jewish.” His current job has erased the “vaguely.” “It forces me to spend more time thinking about what my Judaism means to me,” Cromer said. “What I owe to it, what it has provided for me. I think about it quite a bit.” That job…
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