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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Should we really keep comparing Trump to Hitler?
Yesterday, a few hundred feet from the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump’s Justice Department stage-managed a show of force against his own citizens. Today, the president is being compared to Adolf Hitler — again. Before curfew went into effect at 7 p.m. on Monday, peaceful protesters at Lafayette Square were met with police in…
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For Jews, curfews bring eerie reminders of Medieval and Holocaust eras
As cities across America contend with nightly curfews, many of us are likely unaware that the word “curfew” originates in medieval French and has resonances that run through centuries of Jewish history. The latest news can seem increasingly medieval — from plague to authoritarianism to the public murder of minorities — and the sudden ubiquity…
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Played a cop? Donate to bail funds, urges actor Griffin Newman
With film and TV production shut down for the foreseeable future, many actors are relying on royalties from reruns and syndication to get by. But self-proclaimed “out-of-work actor” Griffin Newman is using his own to help protestors raise bail. Late Monday night, Newman, best known for playing moth-themed superhero Arthur on Amazon’s “The Tick” and…
The Latest
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The Secret Jewish history of The Rolling Stones
Editor’s Note: The Rolling Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts turns 79 today. In honor of that auspicious occasion, we return to this 2014 article about the band’s Jewish influences. In 2014, The Rolling Stones took the stage at HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv. That event represented more than just the world’s greatest and longest-running rock band’s…
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When Jews were kings (and opium lords) in Shanghai
Author of “A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe” and “Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America” Jonathan Kaufman teaches at Northeastern University. His new book, “The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China” tells of two Iraqi Jewish…
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WATCH NOW June 22: Why are Yiddish Songs So Popular Now?
Watch here. Join Rukhl Schaechter, editor of the Forverts, as she explores the growing interest in Yiddish music, with singers Lorin Sklamberg, Daniel Kahn, Sarah Gordon, Michael Alpert and folksong maven Itzik Gottesman – and hear them sing the songs that audiences love to hear. The discussion will be in English. This is part of…
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Woody Allen’s ‘Rainy Day’ tops global box office, heading for UK
Woody Allen’s 2019 film, “A Rainy Day in New York,” available for streaming this week in the UK, is doing good numbers at the box office – relatively speaking. The film topped the global box office in mid-May, earning over half a million in South Korea since opening in the country, which recently eased restrictions…
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‘Quiz Show’ Whistleblower Herb Stempel was a symbol of Jewish struggles
On May 31, it was announced that Herbert Milton Stempel had died the previous month at age 93. Depicted in Robert Redford’s film 1994 “Quiz Show,” the Bronx-born Stempel won notoriety as a TV game show contestant and whistleblower on the fraudulent nature of the industry, in what became known as the 1950s quiz show…
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Escape from New York — a third-generation migration tale
On March 7, I took a picture of a “child pile” in my Brooklyn apartment. Ten of my daughter’s friends had spent the night, celebrating the closing of a school play they’d worked on. The floor was a mess of sleeping bags, pillows, backpacks, soda bottles and empty bags of Doritos. A Happy Birthday banner…
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Unexodus — a story of freedom
Editor’s Note: The Forward is featuring essays, poems and short stories written for our Young Writers Contest. Today’s entry was written by Julie Levey, a 12th grader at New York’s Spence School. You can find more work from our young writers here. The smell of albondigas — Sephardic meatballs with peas and artichoke hearts —…
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Freedom is seeing others for who they truly are
These last couple of weeks during the quarantine, I’ve seen and heard an endless amount of complaints about people not being able to leave their houses and having to cancel vacations. One of the dubious perks that come with being poor is being used to not taking trips to places or going out a lot….
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Fast Forward 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from India, the first to make the journey in years
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Sports Today’s American Jews finally have their era’s Sandy Koufax