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
-
A Jewish prisoner. An SS officer. A forbidden relationship. An absolutely stunning documentary.
There seems to be little doubt that SS officer Franz Wunsch was intensely in love with Helena Citron, a pretty and talented Jewish inmate in Auschwitz. Her feelings for him, however, remain ambiguous. It is indeed the unanswered core question of the stunning documentary, “Love, It Was Not,” that is at once rooted in the…
-
How a real FBI interrogation became the most surreal show on Broadway
Most of Tina Satter’s plays dance around plot, focusing less on events than small, weird, moving micro-moments. This isn’t true of her most recent work, “Is This A Room,” currently on Broadway. In 2017, Satter read the transcript of the FBI interrogation of a young intelligence specialist named Reality Winner, who leaked an intelligence report…
-
‘Blewish’ celebrates Black and Jewish intersectionality through children’s animation
What happens when you mix Black and Jewish identity with animation artistry and the drive to take intersectional representation up a few notches? You get Ezra Edmond’s debut children’s short film, “Blewish,” which is having its world premiere at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. Edmond, who is in his early thirties, is a Los…
The Latest
-
Retire? Pack the court? A Jewish Supreme Court justice’s answers are unconvincing
The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics By Stephen Breyer Harvard University Press, 128 pages, $19.95 Fair or not, the most frequent question U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer gets asked these days is when he plans to retire. “There are many considerations” was his Sphinx-like response in an August interview with…
-
Books Israel’s largest booksellers pull Sally Rooney’s novels
Soon it will be even harder to find Sally Rooney’s books in Hebrew. Two major bookstore chains in Israel, Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim, announced they will no longer sell Rooney’s work The Times of Israel reported Thursday. The move comes after the writer caused an uproar by announcing she would not have her latest novel,…
-
How a unique Torah scroll scribed by a woman led to a historic bar mitzvah
When Gavriel Kedem became a bar mitzvah, he was focused on the usual things: chanting the parsha, giving his dvar, the people watching. He wasn’t thinking about it as a historic moment. But it was — Gavriel was chanting from a scroll written by his mother, Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem, the first woman ever to be…
-
An Israeli Indiana Jones searches for her Lost Ark — and finds a political fault line
What would happen if Indiana Jones was an Israeli woman? And what if her hunt for the Ark of the Covenant could embolden Israeli settlers and upend the lives of Palestinians? Eisner Award winner Rutu Modan’s new graphic novel, “Tunnels,” a madcap dive into the charged world of Israeli antiquities, gives us the answer. Modan…
-
Retrying the Dreyfus case, France flirts with a Jewish candidate’s antisemitism
On Oct. 26, French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Dreyfus Museum in Médan near Paris, the first such historical collection dedicated to the unjustly accused Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus. Macron’s visit underlined that you don’t have to be Jewish to be shocked by the French army’s perfidy in covering up its persecution of Dreyfus. Back…
-
Art In Frank Lloyd Wright’s only synagogue, a masterful blending of color and light
Driving south along Old York Road in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a giant milky-glass tetrahedral dome, cross-hatched with cast-aluminum, seems to rise from the surrounding woods. A bold pastiche of prehistoric, modern and biblical, it simultaneously evokes Mayan ruins, a Japanese pagoda and Mount Sinai, while creating a wholly new form. Beth Sholom, dedicated on Sept….
-
In ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ Chava is a hero. But she wasn’t always.
Editor’s Note: Fifty years ago, on Nov. 3, 1971, the movie adaptation of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ premiered. In honor of that anniversary, this week we are publishing a series of article about the impact of ‘Fiddler’ and its legacy. You can read more of the stories here Given the vaunted position of “Fiddler on…
-
How Neil Diamond wrote his best song and worst album — and why it’s all Lenny Bruce’s fault
“Stones,” Neil Diamond’s seventh studio album, celebrates its 50th anniversary on Nov. 5. It was a pretty big success in its day, reaching #11 on the Billboard 200, selling over 500,000 copies, and containing two Top 20 hits — one of which, “I Am… I Said,” may be the greatest song Diamond ever wrote. And…
Explore
Most Popular
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward UK will recognize Palestinian state if Israel does not end ‘appalling situation’ in Gaza
-
Fast Forward UCLA settles antisemitism lawsuit with $6.13M payout, including donations to Jewish groups
-
Fast Forward 35 rabbis arrested in NYC and DC protests for Gaza food aid
-
Fast Forward Israeli settler arrested after fatal shooting of Palestinian activist featured in ‘No Other Land’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
