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
-
You can now buy the bible in NFT form. But why would you want to?
Perhaps you’re deep into cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and know exactly what a non-fungible token is. Or maybe you, like me, barely know what any of those words mean, but have a vague sense that dudes in a certain kind of bar love to talk your ear off about bitcoin and that NFTs are some…
-
In Paul Rudd’s extreme disappointment, a universal philosophy for 2022
The most recent episode of “Saturday Night Live” revealed that Paul Rudd is not just the sexiest man alive in America in 2021, but also the savviest. Rudd was to be inducted into the “5-Timers Club” — those happy few who have hosted “SNL” five times. But with the Omicron variant sweeping across New York…
-
Does the cheesecake shortage of 2021 mean that Christmas is becoming more Jewish?
Promptly at noon Friday, I went to a Philadelphia cream cheese website to sign up for the “Spread The Feel” campaign. Amid an ongoing cream cheese shortage, Philadelphia’s parent company Kraft Heinz is paying customers $20 to not make cheesecake for Christmas. In exchange for an email address and basic personal info, Kraft will reimburse…
The Latest
-
In a Jewish Nobel laureate’s new collection, recipes for surviving a cold, hard winter
Winter Recipes from the Collective By Louise Glück Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 64pp, $25 The new book of poetry from Louise Glück — her first since she won the Nobel in 2020 — provides a steady unfolding of meaning, quite out of proportion to its brevity. Comprising 15 poems spread out over 40 pages, the…
-
Surviving the Holocaust was a miracle, but the nightmares persist
The memories of Holocaust survivors never cease to horrify. Whenever you think you’re shock-proof, you have to think again. In John Rokosny’s PBS documentary, “They Survived Together,” one survivor recounts how the Nazis, having invaded Poland, forced Jews to carve out their own graves and lie down in them. Often, the self-created graves contained families,…
-
What Yiddish (and the Forward) are doing in the new ‘Spider-Man’
Everytime Spider-Man flirts with the fickle multiverse he encounters a couple of constants. The first is that a version of Spider-Man exists in every reality. The second is that Jews do too. Even, it would seem, the Jews who write for this very Jewish paper. In “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Jews are everywhere. As David…
-
Wait, Robinson Crusoe wasn’t Jewish — was he?
This month marks the 300th anniversary of the death of Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish sailor who served as inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” a novel cherished by generations of readers. The tale of the shipwrecked mariner, first published in 1719, pleased a wide readership avid for adventure stories, like the Jews who relished travel…
-
A mensch of an architect, full of whimsy, genius and morality
Richard Rogers, the English architect who died on Dec. 18 at age 88, proved that it can take a Jewish village to achieve architectural greatness. Cocreator of such popular buildings as the Pompidou Center in Paris, Rogers was born in prewar Florence. He was influenced by his father’s Italian Jewish family, especially a cousin, the…
-
Undeniably, a great film — but is it Israeli? Or Palestinian? Or both?
“Is the film Israeli? Or is it Palestinian?” This is the question I’ve been asked more than any other as I’ve shared my excitement about Eran Kolirin’s film “Let It Be Morning,” based on the novel by Sayed Kashua. It tells the story of a fictional Arab village in Israel that goes under lockdown at…
-
That time ‘I Love Lucy’ confronted antisemitism in front of millions of Americans
A nice thing about being alive in this current moment in history is that one can say things like, “television is the great American art form” and people will actually take you seriously. And if television is the great American art form, Lucille Ball is one of its most important founders. If you haven’t seen…
-
In a notorious French internment camp, harrowing reminders of the consequences of extremism
“When the artist finds himself,” Max Ernst famously remarked, “he is lost.” That he had never found himself, Ernst added, was “his only lasting achievement.” And yet, Ernst had indeed once found himself in, well, surreal circumstances. In 1939, the 50-year old German painter who had lived in Paris since the early 1920s was caught…
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 After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 4
Fast Forward Hanukkah shooting leaves at least 15 dead at Australia’s most popular beach
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Richmond mayor facing resignation calls over posts calling Sydney massacre ‘false flag’
-
Fast Forward Mamdani appointee resigns over past antisemitic online posts about ‘money hungry Jews’
-
Fast Forward Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic with a Jewish streamer?
-
Culture A Jewish-Muslim art show builds ‘little bridges’ of coexistence
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
