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
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Despite her ‘15 minutes of shame,’ Monica Lewinsky didn’t learn much about cancel culture
Monica Lewinsky knows a little something about public shame. “I was patient zero of having a reputation completely destroyed worldwide because of the internet,” she says in the introduction to her new documentary, “15 Minutes of Shame.” That’s why Lewinsky seems as if she would be the perfect guide to take viewers through the minefield…
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Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ came at the right time in the Jewish calendar
This article contains spoilers if you’ve still somehow avoided seeing “Squid Game.” “Squid Game,” a Korean-language Netflix series, was a surprise hit; while executives expected it to be a major success with its native audience, it’s currently on track to become the platform’s most-viewed series ever, with interest still building, according to Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s…
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Why attending the Brookyn Bagelfest made us hate bagels
Immediately upon walking into the Brooklyn Bagelfest, you passed a photo booth featuring a kiddie pool filled with real bagels. A steady stream of eager Instagrammers stepped into the pool to take pictures with oversized inflatable props, like fried eggs, bacon and palm trees — bagels are, after all, traditionally a tropical food. “These Bagels…
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Is the death of the McDonald’s McBagel good for the Jews?
After a 22-year run, the bagel as a staple of McDonald’s is no more. At the start of the pandemic, the fast-food chain pivoted to focus on drive-thru and takeout service, removing over 100 menu items. As dining rooms in the United States reopened in the summer of 2020, many items returned. The bagel, however,…
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In Russia, a Jewish couple dubbed ‘Spartacus.’ In Israel, they’re doing phone sex and voicing air-raid alerts.
When the Iron Curtain fell and Soviet refuseniks were finally allowed to settle in Israel, many found some novel worries, and some familiar ones, waiting on the other side. While they looked for work, these Jews found themselves navigating a new country and a new language. But, amid the stress of assimilation they still had…
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‘It was not hunger. Fear was all I tasted.’
Qian Julie Wang’s memoir, “Beautiful Country,” tells of her childhood as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in New York. Now a lawyer and the founder of the Jews of Color group at Central Synagogue, Wang says she encounters immigrant children today who remind her of her upbringing tempered by persistent hunger and the fear of being…
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An immigrant child’s trauma in a ‘Beautiful Country’
Qian Julie Wang is the author of The New York Times bestseller “Beautiful Country,” a moving memoir of her childhood as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in New York, written on her iPhone during her subway commute to her job as a lawyer. She is the founder and leader of the Jews of Color group at…
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If Steven Spielberg had known about this Dutch hero, he wouldn’t have made ‘Schindler’s List’
Jan Brokken’s “The Just” recounts how in wartime Lithuania, Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk and Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara saved thousands of lives by issuing permits admitting Jewish refugees to the Dutch colony of Curaçao by way of Japan. Yet only in 2018, after the original edition of “The Just” was published in the Netherlands, was…
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After America’s deadliest antisemitic incident, grief, trauma and resilience
Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood By Mark Oppenheimer Knopf, 320 pages, $28.95 After each mass shooting, once the political posturing subsides and the press spotlight moves on, the affected families and communities tend to fade from public consciousness. But what happens to them next? “When the…
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Film & TV Neil Diamond’s blackface scene might be the most embarrassing moment in Jewish cinema history
On October 6th 1927, the original film production of “The Jazz Singer” made its world premiere at the Warners’ Theatre in midtown Manhattan. (I know, I know — seems like just yesterday, right?) Though difficult to sit through these days, even without the segments where Al Jolson appears in blackface, “The Jazz Singer” nevertheless continues…
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Sarah Silverman, let’s not use the word ‘Jewface’
Sarah Silverman has once more weighed in on a perennial debate in the world of casting: who gets to play a Jew? It’s a slippery question, and also the name of a parlor game a friend of mine likes to play. Per this friend’s rules, Zachary Levi, a non-Jew who changed his last name from…
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