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
-
In painting a survivor of the Holocaust, a feeling of overwhelming and indescribable privilege
“Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust,” an exhibition of paintings commissioned by Charles, Prince of Wales was previously shown in Buckingham Palace and soon may be visited at The Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland, until June 6, 2022. In the catalogue, portraits of Holocaust survivors now living in the…
-
Ceramics, Broadway, gay rights activism, Tevye, memoirs — for Harvey Fierstein, they’re all parts of the same quilt
“Hello, Merv,” the unmistakably familiar voice says, gravelly yet warm. “What can I tell you, cookie?” The first thing I want to ask Harvey Fierstein, the 67-year-old multiple Tony Award-winning actor, playwright and librettist, is why he decided to write a memoir. “COVID hit,” he says. “Which I’m sure is the reason for most people…
-
Before the revolution, a little peace and quiet — now there’s a radical idea
The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas By Gal Beckerman Crown, 331 pages, $28.99 Have social media — especially mega sites such as Facebook and Twitter — played indispensable roles in social change in recent years? Your guess, and mine, would likely be yes. Not so fast, says Gal Beckerman in his…
The Latest
-
What programs like “Finding Your Roots” miss — and how I tracked down my own family’s history
Downtime from COVID, with no real end in sight, has led to all manner of new hobbies — and obsessions — including digging deeper into one’s family history. This had been a passion of mine even prior to the rising interest in ancestry that now is practically its own pandemic among my baby boomer peers….
-
The Anne Frank play that was too dark, honest and Jewish for Broadway
In 1955, a decade after Anne Frank perished at Bergen-Belsen, “The Diary of Anne Frank” opened on Broadway. It won the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics Circle award for best play. It would be produced all over the world, and adapted into a movie that was nominated for eight…
-
Like a young Trump in training, the Tinder Swindler is manipulating the media for political gain
The Netflix documentary tells us more than you'd think about journalism and politics
-
‘Sex with Hitler’ is a video game that, unfortunately, does exactly what it promises
Kink comes in all shapes and forms. But I still doubt that what you were hoping to do with your time was play a game featuring a very buff and oddly shiny Hitler as your sexual avatar. And yet. Unfortunately, “Sex with Hitler” dropped in late January on the gaming platform Steam, and is doing…
-
Books Hear classic Yiddish writers read their works, accompanied by translations
An audio recording of 12 Yiddish writers reading their works, accompanied by English translations, is now available. The recording can be ordered either as a digital download or as two CDs (or both), and comes with a book that includes the readings in Yiddish and in English, as well as a biography of each writer…
-
The best (and worst) Jewish ads of the 2022 Super Bowl
While football diehards gnawed their nails as the Rams managed a last-minute victory over the Bengals, those once-a-year watchers had a quite different, but equally suspenseful, experience of Super Bowl LVI. Tuning in for the commercials, casual sports fans wondered which of the night’s two top products was being advertised in each spot: Electric vehicles…
-
It was the most successful Jewish ad campaign of all time — but who was the model?
You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye bread ads. Duane Blue Spruce of the Laguna and Ohkay-Owingeh Pueblo tribes keeps a copy of a Levy’s ad pinned to his office wall at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, where he works as a facilities planning coordinator. Blue…
-
Books Her Bronx Jewish characters ‘hate history’ — and are finally back on bookshelves
Around two years ago, Johanna Kaplan learned, out of the blue, that HarperCollins was interested in reissuing a short story collection she had originally published all the way back in 1975. “It’s a marvelous, marvelous, amazing thing to be happening to me at this age,” said Kaplan, 79. When the collection debuted, under the title…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
- 3
Fast Forward Hanukkah shooting leaves at least 15 dead at Australia’s most popular beach
- 4
Fast Forward Father and son suspects in Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram by law enforcement
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish רבנישע כּתבֿים ווײַזן אומגעריכטע פֿאַרבינדונגען צווישן ייִדיש און לאַדינאָRabbinical texts reveal surprising links between Yiddish and Ladino
לויט אַ נײַ בוך פֿאָרשונגען האָבן טראַדיציאָנאַליסטן אין ביידע עדות געהאַלטן, אַז ייִדן מוזן אָפּהיטן זייער גערעדט לשון
-
Opinion Why Poland’s president canceled his menorah lighting — and how the West helped make that happen
-
Fast Forward 4 House Democrats introduce bill that would enact progressive vision for fighting antisemitism
-
Yiddish אַ ייִדיש־רעדנדיק קינד דאַרף אַ „שטעטל“׃ ווי עלטערן קומען זיי אַנטקעגןIt takes a village to raise a child in Yiddish: How parents are doing it
מחוץ די חסידישע קרײַזן האָבן געוויסע עלטערן געשאַפֿן זייערע אייגענע ייִדיש־סבֿיבֿות
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
