Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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This ultra-Orthodox man is running for president — or is he?
Bored by Biden? Turned off by Trump? Confused by Kanye? Meet Yoely, who is running for president on the Heimishe Party ticket. Heimeshe is Yiddish for wholesome, and a word many Hasidim use to describe themselves and their culture. Yoely – no last name, like Adele and Beyoncé — explains in an Instagram video: “High-mish…
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Finally, Jewish kids’ books are starting to reflect the diversity of Judaism
Think back to the Jewish children’s books of your youth. You may remember “The Adventures of K’Tonton,” “All-of-a-Kind Family” or “The Carp in the Bathtub.” Now picture the characters in those books, and you may notice that they are all straight white able-bodied Ashkenazim of European descent. Is that a fair representation of the Jewish…
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On Don Henley’s birthday, the Secret Jewish History of The Eagles
Editor’s Note: On today, Don Henley’s 73rd birthday, we take stock of his band’s Jewish affinities. Critics have always noted a somewhat acerbic, downright cynical attitude running through many of The Eagles’ best-known songs. But perhaps overlooked has been a narrative running through the band’s work from its very beginnings through its final recordings that…
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Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Strasbourg 1518’ is a gutting danse macabre for coronavirus
Jonathan Glazer has been quietly refining a filmic feeling of discomfort, isolation and pervasive paranoia for 25 years. But the director’s gifts are so remarkable that he often receives assignments that run counter to the mood he creates: Commercials for jeans, beer and cars and, more fittingly, music videos. The director of the films “Birth”…
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How Theodore Bikel found his calling in the civil rights movement
When civil rights activist and NAACP State Field Representative Medgar Evers was murdered, by a Mississippi white supremacist in 1963, a protest rally was organized in Evers’ memory. Theodore Bikel, a rising star in theatre, film, and Broadway musicals, was one of the founders of The Newport Folk Festival. He had been nominated for the…
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s unhinged turn in John Mulaney’s children’s special is the only thing keeping me sane
This weekend, my brother Jacob sent my mother and me a tweet by the writer Emery Lord, the sort of lightly despairing social media dispatch that the coronavirus has made so common: “my toddler,” Lord wrote, “yelling from the other room while I get her a snack: ‘I am LONELY and I want a BAGEL.’”…
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Remembering David Applefield — humanitarian, journalist, congressional candidate
David Applefield, 64, died unexpectedly of an apparent heart attack on July 8 while shooting baskets with his son, Alexandre, on a playground in Red Bank, N.J. The previous day Applefield had lost his race for Congress, coming in third in the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s fourth congressional district. After more than 35 years…
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Hidden in an ordinary armchair, an extraordinary story of Nazi evil
Neo-Nazi visitors to the site of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg are a perpetual problem for the city’s authorities. On a hot September day in 2016, I visited the Zeppelintribüne, the colossal concrete grandstand from which Hitler once addressed the roaring crowds. The sweltering heat ensured that at the time of my arrival,…
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WATCH NOW: September 8: Fiction is Stranger
Watch here. Michael Oren, the award-winning historian turned politician who served as Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., a member of the Knesset and a deputy minister, is publishing a new book of short stories, “The Night Archer.” Watch Jodi Rudoren, editor of The Forward, for a conversation with Ambassador Oren on the differences between America…
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Why Dorothy Parker’s ashes were interred at the NAACP headquarters
When it came to Dorothy Parker’s ashes, she left no instructions, save an epigrammatic epitaph: “Excuse my dust.” But in 1988, over 20 years after her death at 73 from a heart attack (following four suicide attempts), the remains of the rapier-witted New York writer who spent so much of her life changing residences, found…
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The secret Jewish history of Santana
Carlos Santana isn’t Jewish. But that doesn’t stop the Latin-rock bandleader and guitar hero — who turns 73 on Monday, July 20, 2020 — from speculating on his Jewish roots, performing in Israel, peppering his dialogue with choice bits of Yiddish, or conversing with a Kabbalistic angel. Santana, whose million-selling namesake band was founded in…
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