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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Remembering Eddie Van Halen and his Jewish mentor
Eddie Van Halen, the iconoclastic rock guitarist best known for his instrumental contributions to his namesake band, has died after a year-long bout with throat cancer. Van Halen, who in 1972 founded the group Van Halen with his brother, Alex Van Halen, was 65. Eddie’s flashy guitar-playing, along with frontman David Lee Roth’s outrageous, wild-man…
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Is Philip Roth the male Joan Didion? Asking for TikTok
On Thursday the Swedish Academy will determine its newest Nobel Laureate in Literature. Until today, that precise conversation — had several years ago — was probably the last time anyone was comparing Joan Didion and Philip Roth’s literary legacies. Enter a new, viral TikTok where a young woman has claimed, “Philip Roth is Joan Didion…
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Could Black Jewish author Jamaica Kincaid be the next Nobel laureate?
With the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature just two days away, observers are busy speculating on potential winners. Among the favorites for the prize is Black Jewish author Jamaica Kincaid. Bjorn Wiman, culture editor of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, predicted to the Guardian that either Kincaid or the poet Anne Carson would…
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Dr. Harvey Alter’s Nobel Prize is the success of Jewish America
The announcement that Dr. Harvey Alter will share the 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine with two other physicians for their discovery of hepatitis C will resonate with the families of Jewish doctors around the world — and there are quite a few of those. Alter of course isn’t the first Jewish doctor to win a…
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Has Donald Trump been listening to Blue Oyster Cult?
Has President Donald Trump been listening to Blue Oyster Cult during his four-day stay at Walter Reed Medical Center, where he has been under medical care since Friday as the world’s most famous coronavirus patient? How else to explain yet another of his inscrutable tweets? This afternoon, the Tweeter-in-Chief told the world “Don’t be afraid…
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From humorist to hubris — the rise and fall of Jerry Seinfeld
The first gratuitous name-drop in Jerry Seinfeld’s “Is This Anything?” shows up on page 253. A luxury car reference follows soon after. The name-drop (“I had breakfast with Colin Quinn”) and the car reference (“We chose one of the greatest convertibles of all time, the ‘89 Porsche 911 Speedster, and did the trip”) tease Seinfeld’s…
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Trump doctor press conference straight out of ‘The Twilight Zone’
The Trump presidency is closing in on four years of magical thinking, and it’s beginning to show its limits. The virus Trump said would go away on its own has instead caught up with him, forcing him to convalesce at Walter Reed Medical Center. But if you trust folks in white coats, you may be…
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Music Cantor’s new record mixes pop and prayer
On the day of the autumn equinox, which fell directly between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur this year, Los Angeles-based musician, vocalist and cantor, Daniela Gesundheit, released her newest album, “Alphabet of Wrongdoing.” “Releasing the record on the day of equal light and darkness in the middle of the high holidays… It was an opportunity…
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He may be our lox expert, but his heart belongs to clamming
He had opened about two dozen top necks, separated the meat from the juice, and was ready to put up the water for the linguini. Another pot on the stove, above a low flame, was some simmering Greek olive oil, mixing it up with two cloves of chopped garlic. The aroma in the kitchen was…
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Ellis Island reminds us that immigrants were once welcome in America
Ellis Island: A People’s History By Małgorzata Szejnert Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye Scribe, 384 pages, $28 Between 1892 and 1954, Ellis Island processed 12 million newcomers. About 40 percent of today’s Americans are descended from the men, women, and children who passed through the country’s principal immigration absorption center. If the United…
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Remembering Murray Schisgal — the consummate Jewish playwright with the eyes of a basset hound
The American Jewish playwright Murray Schisgal, who has died at age 93, baffled generations of actors and theatregoers with his bittersweet plays redolent with Yiddishkeit. Author of such acclaimed works as “The Typists and The Tiger (1963),” “Luv (1964),” and “Tootsie” (1982), Schisgal mystified even astute actors who specialized in performing his works but were…
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