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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Devoted to his friends and Israel, sometimes to a fault — Zubin Mehta at 84
Zubin Mehta’s retirement last autumn after a half-century as musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) was followed by many tributes, including massive CD box sets of his complete Warner recordings, his complete recordings for Decca with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and complete Columbia albums. Now 84, Mehta has earned a retrospective look at…
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WATCH NOW: January 12: Meet the Forward 50
Watch the recording here. Every year we publish the Forward 50, a list of remarkable people who have had a particular impact on our communities. This year, we’re asking them to join our Editor-in-Chief, Jodi Rudoren, for “50 American Jews, 10 conversations,” a weekly series of Zoominars about …whatever is on their minds. The list…
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A Quibit (Quick Obit) for Quibi (with apologies to Walt Whitman)
O Quibi! my Quibi! rise up and hear the yells; Rise up—for you the grave is made —for you the content cries, For you the japes and unkind tweets—for you the nets a-crowding, For you they call, the giggling mass, their eager faces turning; Here Quibi! Dear short-form! 2 billion invested! It is some dream…
The Latest
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‘Borat 2’ is a riot, but slandering a nation’s history goes too far
Borat was never a victimless enterprise. In “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America,” the Kazakh journalist invited an RV full of frat brothers to reminisce about the days of slavery (they needed zero prompting, save for their companion’s foreign, sympathetic presence). More troublingly, a kindly Jewish couple operating a kosher bed and breakfast provided the venue…
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Is Sinclair Lewis’s 1936 play about American fascism even timelier today?
In 1936, as the United States struggled to overcome the Depression, Hitler pressed ahead with his revival of the German military and fascist forces in Europe continued to erode the norms of public life, Sinclair Lewis debuted the theatrical adaptation of his 1935 novel of “It Can’t Happen Here.” Co-written with playwright John C. Moffitt,…
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Winding up in bed with Borat’s daughter may be the least of Rudy Giuliani’s problems
One would think it would be impossible to shame Rudy Giuliani at this juncture, and yet… America’s erstwhile mayor and current personal attorney to the president appeared to have been bested by Borat, who seemed to catch him on film mid-Toobin maneuver. Giuliani now claims the footage is deceptive and an effort to dampen his…
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Trump should know better than to mess with Lesley Stahl
As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, President Donald Trump reportedly stormed out of a room at the White House after “60 Minutes” host Lesley Stahl asked him some questions he thought were mean. As one White House staffer told the Washington Post, “The interview was not that bad…. She just had a tone he didn’t…
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At 94, Mel Brooks makes his first ever political endorsement ad
While Mel Brooks has dabbled in the local politics of a frontier town, enjoined theatergoers to join a Nazi kickline and famously proclaimed “It’s good to be king,” he’s never made a video endorsing a political candidate. Even at 94, there’s a first time for everything. On October 21, Brooks’ son Max posted his father’s…
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Aaron Sorkin’s moralizing liberal fantasy betrays the real ‘Chicago 7’
According to the lore provided to the press, the development of Aaron Sorkin’s new movie, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” originated in 2007 when Steven Spielberg, who at the time was toying with making the film himself, summoned Sorkin to his home and urged him to write the screenplay for him. Interestingly, Sorkin had…
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How Jeffrey Toobin might have commented on the sex scandal he created
For decades, writer and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has dispensed commentary on the political scandals du jour. Today, he is one. On Monday, the New Yorker suspended Toobin after he exposed himself on a staff Zoom call last week. Multiple people on the call said that Toobin, apparently believing that his video was disconnected, “switched…
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Sol LeWitt: The conceptual artist who made an app of himself
The history of conceptual art runs parallel to the history of big tech. Their peaks and valleys are the same — all you have to do is change the names and some (though not too many) of the buzzwords. Both started out as young, peripheral and idealistic as the counterculture that inspired them. Over the…
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