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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Does Mark Zuckerberg know what Meta means in Hebrew?
Facebook is dead, long live Meta. But, actually, Meta is dead, too. Let me explain. On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new name for Facebook to mark its transition to what he calls “the metaverse.” The name, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Meta, doesn’t translate well. Unless that’s the point. While the word, now applied to…
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A Texas politician wants to investigate my book and 849 others — bring it on
State Rep. Matt Krause, a Republican candidate for Texas attorney general, has prepared a list of 850 books that, in his judgment, should be banned from the state’s classrooms. He is concerned that such books address sexual and racial themes that “make students feel uncomfortable.” According to news reports, Mr. Krause, who chairs the House…
The Latest
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Does Netflix’s ‘Inside Job’ encourage antisemitic conspiracy theorists?
Jews are at the roots of most of the major conspiracy theories. A secret cabal who runs the government? That may be a QAnon tenet these days, but it’s originally from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a made-up pamphlet purporting to detail the Jewish plan for global domination. Bloodsucking lizard people? That one…
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The 10 most terrifying (Jewish) songs for Halloween
Due to Halloween’s pagan origins, Rabbinic law prohibits the Jewish celebration of the popular autumn holiday, which might explain why there’s usually a notable scarcity of “slutty rabbi” costumes at your typical All Hallows’ Eve bacchanal. But the dark allure of haunted houses, jack-o’-lanterns and (let’s be honest here) candy corn is often too powerful…
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Eternally fascinated with Jewish culture, Wes Anderson delivers the best film of the year
This year’s Cannes Film Festival had its share of controversial titles, including a disturbing musical about a murderous comedian and a gorefest about a woman who has sex with cars and goes on killing sprees. But no other film at the festival inspired such heated discussion and debate as Wes Anderson’s long-awaited “The French Dispatch.”…
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‘Do you remember when your classmate told you to go to the gas chambers?’ — A letter from a Soviet-born parent to her American child
Dear Eliana: Do you remember how you used to sneak into the kitchen at one or two o’clock in the morning because you were hungry and your young, growing body needed Oreos or SmartFood or a plate full of spaghetti? And how lots of times I told you this wasn’t a good idea because your…
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For Mort Sahl, being Jewish meant being part of the opposition
The American Jewish standup comedian Mort Sahl, who died Oct. 26 at age 94, provided spontaneous garrulity that first galvanized audiences during the tight-lipped Eisenhower era. At a time when Senator Joseph McCarthy dominated Washington, D.C. politics, Sahl represented free speech. The English Jewish author Jonathan Miller opined that Sahl and other Jewish comedians made…
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In the Warsaw Ghetto, where an Indian play imagined the worst that was yet to come
A new novel revives a forgotten episode within the Warsaw Ghetto — and imagines what might happen after
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In a very Jewish World Series, it’s Astros vs. Braves, and rabbi vs. rabbi
Rabbi Adam Starr, who leads an Orthodox synagogue in Atlanta, found a way to make this year’s World Series more meaningful: he proposed a holy wager. Tuesday afternoon — with only a couple hours to go before the first pitch of Game 1 — the longtime Braves fan texted his Houston-area colleague, Rabbi Barry Gelman,…
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Was Andy Griffith’s first big hit really an old Yiddish vaudeville routine?
Before he was the iconic sheriff of fictional Mayberry, the bumbling Air Force recruit in “No Time For Sergeants” or even the deranged drifter in “A Face In the Crowd,” Andy Griffith started out as a comic dialect monologist. He told colorful and droll country tales ladled out in his mellifluous “molasses in January,” North…
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How a notorious Nazi almost got a Hollywood biopic — and why Kubrick refused to direct
Albert Speer, the Nazi architect who built a Cathedral of Light for Hitler and commanded millions of prisoners in the forced production of weaponry, had a comfortable second life. After serving 20 years in prison, Speer became a best-selling author, penning the memoir “Inside The Third Reich.” Naturally, in 1971, he and his publisher were…
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