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
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
The Latest
-
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…
-
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
-
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…
-
In new memoir, Jamie Raskin recalls chaos and confusion of Jan. 6 insurrection
Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, lost his son to suicide in the last days of 2020. Just a few days later, he lived through the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol — and became a central figure in the Democratic Party’s response. As the lead House of Representatives impeachment manager charged with prosecuting President…
-
Was Humphrey Bogart playing a famous Jewish gangster in this overlooked movie?
Eighty years ago this month, Warner Brothers released “All Through the Night,” a comedy-drama about reformed gangster “Gloves” Donahue who, upon learning the German baker of his favorite cheesecake has been murdered, uncovers, attacks and breaks up a secret Nazi spy cell in New York’s Yorkville neighborhood with the help of his colorful Runyonesque criminal…
-
Why it matters that the pope has his own Netflix show
Why would the pope -- who hasn't watched TV in over 20 years -- have a Netflix show?
-
In cricket, instances of antisemitism amid a rich Jewish history
Is cricket, passionately played in England and its former colonies, undergoing an antisemitism crisis? So asked the English Jewish barrister Daniel Lightman in a recent article in the right-wing outlet The Spectator. The cricket world was jarred after Azeem Rafiq, a former player of Pakistani origin, admitted that, as a teenager, he had posted mocking…
-
Genius, jerk, misogynist, everyman — the many lives of Saul Bellow
Asaf Galay’s documentary “The Adventures of Saul Bellow,” with its play on the title of Bellow’s breakthrough 1953 novel, “The Adventures of Augie March,” adroitly signals its intentions: not just to thumbnail the writer’s picaresque life and literary career, but to seek out correspondences between the two. With Bellow, who died at 89 in 2005,…
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Fast Forward First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 3
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 4
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘The most Australian name’: Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach attack, embodies a nation’s grief
-
Fast Forward A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel advocate in LGBTQ spaces, is shutting down
-
Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
-
Fast Forward Federal attorneys leave Trump’s University of California antisemitism investigation en masse, alleging ‘sham’ process
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism