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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Theater Is Orpheus And Eurydice A Myth About Political Power? In ‘Hadestown,’ Absolutely.
Editor’s note: On April 30 ‘Hadestown’ was nominated for 14 Tony Awards, the highest number of any eligible Broadway show. Orpheus and Eurydice: You know the story. They fall in love, Eurydice dies, and Orpheus, a musician of astonishing talent, follows her to the underworld, hoping to rescue her. His music so moves Hades, god…
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Le Corbusier — Revolutionary Architect, Nazi Apologist
“I am quite simple, even transparent. It’s the events swirling around me that are twisted.” When he wrote these words late in life to a friend, the world-renowned architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, seemed to anticipate the controversies that his revolutionary ideas and crowded life would eventually inspire. In light of a…
The Latest
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How To Talk To Your Four Sons About The Mueller Report
On April 18, Attorney General William Barr will make public a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Trump campaign and administration. The report, a record of a wide-ranging probe launched nearly two years ago, is said to be nearly 400 pages long and to offer insights into the president’s ties to…
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Should We Be Colorizing Photographs From Auschwitz?
In the photograph, an adolescent girl wearing an oversized blue prison uniform stares emptily at the camera. Her tawny hair is cropped short; her face is gaunt. Her bottom lip is swollen, marked by a sliver of red blood. Like many, I first saw the photograph of Czesława Kwoka, a Polish teenager who was killed…
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Swiss Court Rules Unpublished Kafka Papers Transferred To Israel
Contemporary audiences nearly missed the chance to read most of Franz Kafka’s work. When the writer died in 1924 at the age of 40, he entrusted his manuscripts to his friend Max Brod under the condition that he burn them. The fact that we still abuse the adjective “Kafkaesque,” is proof that these terms weren’t…
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FolksbienRU’s ‘DOM №’ Is A Cool And Immersive Passover Event — But Is It For English Speakers?
Perhaps because I lack some self-awareness, I rarely feel like an outsider in my Spanish Harlem neighborhood. But last Friday night, I arrived at a secret location one block from my apartment and found myself thoroughly bewildered by surroundings that should, by rights, be more familiar to me. FolksbieneRU, (a Russian-centered partnership initiative of Genesis…
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Maybe It’s Time We Reconsidered ‘Dayenu’
In a matter of days, Jews around the world will erupt in the familiar, if irritating, tune of “Dayenu.” Maybe that chorus, a strident battery of notes that sound wrong even when they’re hit right, can explain how the title of a song meant to inspire gratitude has been co-opted into the Yiddish canon of…
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Film & TV You Can Have A ‘Game Of Thrones’ Haggadah For Your Seder
The first episode of the final season of “Game of Thrones” arrived Sunday night, and while some are already crying shame at the show’s loss of momentum, the series has picked up the pace on one score: cynical brand tie-ins. You can now learn the High Valyrian language on Duolingo and use your phrasebook to…
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As The Forverts Print Edition Comes To An End, A Passover Thought
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. As many of you know, the April 2019 edition of the Forverts was the very last to come out in print. From now on, all our resources will be devoted to improving and growing our website. Although we’re very optimistic about the future of the Forverts online…
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After The American Dream, Is There Anywhere To Go But Down?
A couple of years ago, while conducting genealogical research online, I stumbled across an extraordinary document. It was a called a “Declaration of Intention” from the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, and it was signed, in a wobbly hand, by my great-grandfather, Charles Eil. By signing the form on that day — October 4, 1909…
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After The Revolution, Joshua Furst Finds The Cost Of Freedom
REVOLUTIONARIES: A NOVEL By Joshua Furst Alfred A. Knopf: 352 pages, $26.95 It’s hard to write historical fiction about recent history. That’s because history itself is, or has become, its own kind of fiction, told and retold, preserved in sound and image, as if these were windows we might open and climb through. Want to…
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Fast Forward Rep. Max Miller says driver called him a ‘dirty Jew’ and threatened to kill his family. A local doctor turned himself in.
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News An Alabama millionaire offered Jews $50,000 to move to his town. 16 years later, what’s left?
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Culture Why is Israel’s attack on Iran called ‘Rising Lion’ — and what does the Bible have to do with it?
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News As Israel attacks, what is life like for Jews in Iran?
In Case You Missed It
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Culture How a Jewish reporter like me got addicted to Christian media
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Opinion Israeli leaders are using Holocaust comparisons to justify attacks on Iran. Is that kosher?
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Fast Forward Over half of Jewish students at Columbia experienced discrimination and exclusion after Oct. 7, survey shows
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Fast Forward Journalist board of Shtetl, news site covering haredi Orthodoxy, resigns after founder renounces mission
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