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
-
Are public Supreme Court confirmation hearings rooted in antisemitism?
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court and the first Black woman to be nominated, just completed two days of intense, and at times racially loaded, questioning in front of Congress about her qualifications for the role. In recent years, these widely-publicized hearings have become a form of political theater, with…
-
‘I cry for the girls, for my father and myself’ — Isidore Abramowitz and the legend of the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy
Why am I telling this story? Friends gently ask if I really want to do this. My frail 90-year-old brother fears for “our father’s good name.” His experience in the fire has been partially documented, and suspicion already cast and mercifully forgotten. Why revive it now? The obvious answer is that I have a few…
-
Oscar-nominated ‘Bullies’ documentary opens up a much-needed conversation
Jay Rosenblatt’s “When We Were Bullies,” the Oscar-nominated documentary short film that explores how bullying continues to affect its perpetrators, couldn’t be more timely. Though the incident in question took place more than half a century ago in a Brooklyn schoolyard, it haunts the filmmaker and many of his fellow classmates who were fifth graders…
The Latest
-
The surprisingly Jewish history of the Rorschach inkblot test
April 2 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Hermann Rorschach, the Swiss psychoanalyst who propounded the Rorschach inkblot test, still used as a means of evaluating mental conditions. The Rorschach test immediately attracted strong support from Jewish clinicians. These included Françoise Minkowska-Brokman, of Polish ancestry, who introduced the test in France as well…
-
Two hundred artworks later, has Bob Dylan finally painted his masterpiece?
Does Bob Dylan write his songs in black and white or in color? This is just one question of many that occur to a viewer after spending a few hours with the 200-odd visual artworks that comprise “Bob Dylan Retrospectrum,” on exhibit through April 17 at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum on the…
-
Never have I ever missed Stephen Sondheim more than I do today
The night that Stephen Sondheim died, I went out for drinks with a new friend. We played “Never Have I Ever,” a game I hadn’t even thought of since college, and I very slowly nursed a cocktail called, romantically, the Hundred-Year-Old Dream. We stayed out for hours. Sondheim was a master of human connection. He…
-
How an Orthodox Jew became the great defender of books and bookstores
In Praise of Good Bookstores By Jeff Deutsch Princeton University Press, 216 pp, $19.95 My university’s library recently announced that, in order to make space for lounges and meeting rooms, it was putting about a third of its collection into storage. But not to worry: Readers need only submit a request, and a book will…
-
A Yiddish performance so versatile, it spans from ‘Mauthausen’ to Elvis Presley
With her latest project, “The Ballad of Mauthausen,” Dutch Yiddish singer Niki Jacobs has pulled off the seemingly impossible: She has recast the song cycle of the same name by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis and poet Iakovos Kambanellis as an avant-garde Yiddish cantata that remains true to the spirit of the original while extracting new…
-
‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ undercuts its own feminist and Jewish identity
“Do what I say and not what I do,” seems to be the catchphrase for the newest season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” The fourth season sees comedy prodigy Miriam “Midge” Maisel rejecting the rules of a man’s world and attempting to have it all — her Upper West Side lifestyle, her job and her…
-
Film & TV ‘WeCrashed’ is a live action cartoon of an Israeli CEO’s fall from grace
In the world of startups, WeWork’s Adam Neumann was a unicorn – the figurehead of a mythic, privately held company worth north of a billion dollars. In the world of Jews he was something just as legendary: 6’5”. Jared Leto – who plays Neumann in the new AppleTV+ show “WeCrashed,” the latest in a litany…
-
Are virtual minyans and avatar rabbis the future of Judaism?
Some Reform and Orthodox Jews are finding a place to practice their religion in the Metaverse. Could a virtual Passover celebration be far off?
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Chabad on high alert after false Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens war claims
- 2
Opinion Marco Rubio invoked a medieval antisemitic trope in justifying war with Iran
- 3
Culture How an Amish Mennonite school in Arkansas went viral with a song by an Orthodox Jew
- 4
Opinion The real reason for the US war with Iran may have nothing to do with Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Trump’s Iran dithering puts Israel in an unprecedented position
-
Fast Forward AIPAC is targeting candidates who want to condition aid to Israel. Who has crossed its red line?
-
Yiddish ווידעאָ: שוועדישע ייִדישיסטן קומען קיין ניו־יאָרק צו פֿאַרזוכן אַן עכטן בייגלVIDEO: Swedish Yiddishists come to NYC to taste an authentic bagel
טאָמאַס וווּדסקי און זײַן ייִדיש־תּלמידה מרים באַקענען זיך מיט אַ ייִדיש־רעדנדיקן טאַקסי־שאָפֿער און אַ יונגן ייִדישן בעקער
-
News Jewish Democrats press for oversight as Trump’s Iran war rages on
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
