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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How the Forward, with humor and vehemence, taught its readers to vote
This is the third installment of a special series exploring The Forward’s election coverage throughout its 123-year history. Click here to sign up to receive it through our email newsletter, and find our earlier installments here. Look: Voting’s complicated. There are different deadlines to register depending on where you live, mixed messages about identification requirements…
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Like the Jewish women laureates before her, Louise Glück sees humanity in God
On October 8, the American poet Louise Glück became the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the fourth Jewish woman, following Nelly Sachs (1966), Nadime Gordimer (1991) and Elfriede Jelinek (2004). There’s much that separates Glück, whose work has long been known for its deceptive clarity, from her Jewish predecessors. She…
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Now 90, Frederick Wiseman is as vital and relevant as ever
If there were a Nobel Prize for documentary filmmaking, Frederick Wiseman would have won a long time ago. Not just because he’s talented (no guarantee of Stockholm gold), but because his work seems to fit so well with the guilty dynamite mogul’s pet ideals: “wide-hearted humanity,” “benefit to mankind,” and so forth. The first time…
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On his 80th birthday, remembering the time John Lennon sang ‘Hava Nagilah’
Had he not been gunned down in December 1980 by a deranged “fan” lying in wait for him outside of his Upper West Side residence in Manhattan, John Lennon may well have been observing his 80th birthday on Friday, October 9. The ostensible founder and leader of the Beatles, the most beloved critically and commercially…
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Sukkahs for humans? That’s so 5780. This year, Jewish pets observe the chag
For Jews, Sukkot is just the latest holiday to fall victim to the pandemic. Singing and dancing are off the (outdoor) table. Lulavs and etrogs can’t be shared. Even the sukkah, which might seem like the perfect pandemic-era structure, is suspect: New York authorities mandated social distancing inside, and most synagogues are treating them like…
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A Jewish poet of survival, Louise Glück is an incredibly timely Nobel choice
For new readers and longtime readers, one of the great pleasures of Glück’s work is following her progression as a poet
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Pence’s debate fly has a Talmudic ancestor
Yesterday during the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate, a fly breached a plexiglass barrier amid a miasma of droplets and planted itself firmly on Vice President Mike Pence’s head for two full minutes as he nattered on about law enforcement. Surely you noticed, have seen the memes, the analysis and the instant Twitter account — but…
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Louise Glück, Jewish poet of classical themes, wins the Nobel Prize
In the maelstrom of coronavirus, Borough Park protests and vice-presidential debates, finally some good news: Poet Louise Glück has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The granddaughter of Hungarian Jews who ran a New York grocery, she is the first Jewish literature laureate since Bob Dylan, who took the prize in 2016. The Swedish…
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Long live Zayde Wisdom, the NHL’s new most Yiddishkeit player
A lot of our zaydes are right-wingers. Many are wise. But not like this. On Wednesday, Philadelphia’s hockey team, the Flyers, drafted a young man with the improbably old and Jewish name of Zayde Wisdom in their second round picks. It’s the second bit of good news this week for the 18-year-old Toronto native, who…
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Did the Trump White House really echo ‘Triumph of the Will’?
In film theory, there’s something called the Kuleshov Effect, which teaches that juxtaposing images in sequence can suggest completely different reads of a shot. The typical example is an image of a blank-faced man placed alongside an image of a baby in a casket, a pairing that makes viewers interpret the man’s expression as sad…
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That time the Bee Gees sang a love song to Israel
News that HBO has acquired the rights to air “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” — the first authorized documentary about the famed singing group —made us wonder if it might offer any insight into or reveal the untold story behind the group’s 1971 ballad, “Israel.” The British-by-way-of-Australia group’s 1971 album,…
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