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
-
Prairie Sonata: A new novel of Canadian Jewish life
Read this article in Yiddish. Prairie Sonata Sandy Shefrin Rabin FriesenPress, 2020, 288 pp. Yiddish culture always had better luck in Canada than in the United States. Partly this was because Jewish immigrants to Canada were more cohesive and better organized, and Canadian society in general displayed greater respect for cultural diversity. As a result,…
-
What We Get Wrong About Karl Marx
While never a believer in Judaism, and at times vicious about the faith, the revolutionary philosopher Karl Marx came from an indisputably Jewish background: Both of his parents’ fathers were rabbis. The fact that he was not, himself, Jewish is the result of a curious historical circumstance. Marx’s father, Heinrich, born Herschel Levi, earned his…
-
Michelle Zauner’s new memoir will tell you how grief tastes
If you don’t think great human drama can play out in a supermarket, just read the first pages of Michelle Zauner’s new memoir, “Crying in H Mart.” The largest Asian supermarket chain in the United States, H Mart takes its first initial from the Korean phrase han ah reum, which means “one arm full of…
The Latest
-
Bridge isn’t just for your grandparents anymore
When I think of bridge, I think of my grandmother, who played regularly with her bridge club until she died. I associate the game with a sort of 1950s housewife aesthetic, and the elderly. The whole thing feels quaint. But according to “Dirty Tricks,” a documentary that premiered Thursday at the Hot Docs festival, bridge…
-
Why Jeff Goldblum, living meme and baboon whisperer, still matters
They, uh, broke the mold when they made Jeff Goldblum. A delightful eccentric, whose charms lean into singularity, is a kind of cultural anomaly when it comes to lasting power. His iconography — from his “Creation of Adam”-recline in “Jurassic Park,” to a straight-ahead shot of his face from “The Fly” that adorned bathroom stalls…
-
Inside the Hidden History of Rosenwald Schools
Julius Rosenwald, the son of Jewish immigrants who fled religious persecution in Germany, turned Sears, Roebuck & Co. into America’s largest retailer. Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery, created the Tuskegee Institute and led the college for more than 30 years. Their groundbreaking partnership in the early decades of the 20th century led…
-
My mother, my dream and Mama Rose
My mother, Lily, was born in 1911 on a dining room table in the Bronx. She would live through World War I, the Spanish Flu, Women’s Suffrage, the Roaring Twenties, the Stock Market Crash, the Great Depression, and World War II before she was 30. She took her final bow on June 23, 2014 at…
-
So many years after the Holocaust, still an unbearable silence
She died too young, too, too young. So, memories are few. It’s the boiled tongue I remember, the very large cow’s tongue – like yours and mine. Don’t recall the cooking. Did water get changed in the very large pot, before it was done? The pink meat was speckled with white. What did it taste…
-
Remembering Anne Douglas, a woman of charity and a late convert to Judaism
Anne Buydens Douglas, who died April 29 at age 102, collaborated with her husband Kirk Douglas in extraordinarily generous philanthropic ventures. The couple, both of whom reached their centenary, showed that advanced age can be accompanied by heightened humanistic values. Born Hannelore Marx in Hanover, Germany, to a family of wealthy industrialists, she acquired business…
-
Why Jews are still crazy about mahjong
From the 1920s until today, mahjong has captured the imagination of American Jewish players like few other games. Annelise Heinz, who teaches at the University of Oregon, is the author of “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.” Recently, I spoke with Heinz about what mahjong has meant to Jewish communities….
-
How Jewish TikTokers are trying to reclaim an antisemitic trend
“If I Were a Rich Man” is one of the most iconic songs from “Fiddler on the Roof.” In it, Tevye, borrowing from niggunim, a wordless Jewish meditative tune, dreams of a better life outside the shtetl. Unfortunately, the beloved song has been turned into a flourishing antisemitic trend on TikTok, spawning more than 25,000…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
- 2
Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
- 3
Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
- 4
Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture In ‘Guns & Moses,’ an Orthodox rabbi packs heat — no questions asked
-
Opinion How I got AI to create fake Nazi memos — and what that means for the future of antisemitism
-
Fast Forward How the Jewish commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ could help a woman challenge Kentucky’s abortion ban in court
-
Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
