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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Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
Though Dylan and Streisand's voices may seem ill-suited to each other, the two complement each other gorgeously on 'The Very Thought of You'
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Why this Bloomsday is different from the rest
Now more than ever Leopold Bloom’s mundane day thrills with danger. While the protagonist of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” notoriously did very little, his every action — drinking at a pub; traipsing through Dublin; dining with his uncle at a hotel — now presents us with certain pandemic-related risks. Should we emulate Bloom as many bibliophiles…
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A noshing tour of an eerily quiet Lower East Side
I love ghosts. I became a tour guide to visit the ghosts of the past and share them and their wisdom with my clients. Few places in New York have so many ghosts as the Lower East Side. Residing among the fusion restaurants, cafes and cocktail bars, the spirits of the many immigrant communities who…
The Latest
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Who would win in a Ted Cruz-Ron Perlman showdown?
Somehow it’s come to this. There’s a global pandemic, nationwide demonstrations against racism, and in the middle of it all, a sitting U.S. senator has challenged “Hellboy” actor Ron Perlman to a wrestling match. Monday morning, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), mad over an earlier spat between Perlman and Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), let loose on…
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The ‘Fawlty Towers’ episode skewering Nazis deserves to be preserved
John Cleese can now boast that his little sitcom about a seaside hotel is a cultural lightning rod on the level of “Gone with the Wind.” Late last week, the BBC-owned streaming service UKTV removed a 1975 episode of “Fawlty Towers” for racial slurs, including the N-word and the British epithet “wog.” Cleese, the show’s…
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What Hasidim can teach everyone about staying safe on the Internet
Last year, the journalist Kevin Roose wrote about Caleb Cain, a young, white, twenty-something man who came to sympathize with the alt-right (and then abandon them) simply by watching YouTube videos. Cain’s journey was largely shaped by YouTube’s algorithm, which responded to his viewership by recommending increasingly right-wing content. Roose, who has spent years exploring…
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Abolishing the police is a radical idea — that’s been around for over a century
In 1905, Pennsylvania did something unprecedented: It founded America’s first state police force. The new institution, which was more highly militarized than previous law enforcement systems, was created for one reason: The state government wanted a more organized and efficient way to break strikes. The new force approached that mission with zeal — and violence….
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She channels the spirits of Elie Wiesel and Albert Einstein. She says ‘It’s time to look up.’
One Yom Kippur a few years ago, Marilyn Kapp sensed that a group of children was sitting with her in shul. They had all passed on, but Kapp was unfazed. She spoke to these out-of-body children, as she always does. “I said ‘Oh, are you from the Holocaust and would you like me to tell…
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Painting ‘Birkenau’ — and our collective oblivion
On one of the last days of the “before” era, I went to the Met Breuer to see “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All” — an extraordinary show that you can now see in a video tour online. As I walked to the museum, I saw groups of teenagers hanging out on Madison Avenue — while…
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WATCH NOW: July 13: Five Yiddish Comedians Walk Into a Zoom…
WATCH HERE. Join Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter as she talks to contemporary stars of Yiddish comedy and mavens of Yiddish humor. Hear some of the routines that keep audiences coming back for more. This talk will be in English. Shane Baker has appeared both Off-Broadway and internationally as Vladimir in his own Yiddish translation of…
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The sturgeon will see you now — an expert’s guide to smoked fish
Smoked salmon or lox? That is the question. On Sunday mornings in the 1940’s and 50’s, Jewish people lined the streets of New York to get their lox fix from the appetizing stores around at the time. It was a ritual; there had to be lox on the Sunday breakfast table. Why did it happen?…
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The extremely problematic and incredibly harsh impact of Coronavirus on art
Most art is unfinished — quietly, unglamorously, pointlessly. Two and a half chapters of a novel yellowing in a bottom drawer; sets for a play nobody bothers to produce; a pilot never aired; a melody never resolved; a canvas never covered. That’s just the physical evidence — for every half-finished work, there are thousands that…
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In Case You Missed It
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Opinion Right-wing insurrectionists tried to topple the German government in 1920 — it’s happening again in Trump’s America
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Theater Can a kinky new Yiddish musical resurrect a lost art — and one man who got spanked to death?
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Fast Forward Josh Shapiro’s Judaism was not why Kamala Harris snubbed him, new book claims
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Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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