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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The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
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Was Meyerbeer Forgotten Because He Was Jewish — Or Because Of A Goat?
The composer Giacomo Meyerbeer got pushed out of the operatic canon because of anti-Semitism. That much is fact. But if you’re looking for a reason that Meyerbeer’s 1859 opera “Dinorah” hasn’t been performed in the United States since 1925 — that is, until now — the first thing you really have to reckon with is…
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Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part Five: Rahel Varnhagen
If you know about Rahel Varnhagen, it’s probably because of Hannah Arendt. Arendt called Varnhagen, born Rahel Levin in 1771, “my closest friend, though she has been dead for some hundred years.” The two shared a background; both were well-off German-born Jews. They shared an intellectual daring and determination; while Arendt, born in 1906, would…
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: What Happened?
On March 25, 1911, a rag bin caught fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women — and exposing the unsafe, exploitive working conditions that led to their demise. The industrial tragedy is remembered as one of the worst in American history. In the early 20th…
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: How It Was Covered Through The Years
When the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire broke out on March 25, 1911, the Forward was on the scene. For days it dominated the news — 146 workers, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women perished in the fire, still known today as one of the worst industrial tragedies in America. The coverage was abundant in the…
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Film & TV 9 Questions For ‘Working Woman’ Director Michal Aviad
It’s a familiar story that nonetheless demands retelling: A woman, a job and a boss who doesn’t respect boundaries. So runs the plot of Michal Aviad’s “Working Woman,” which premieres in New York March 27. The film arrives in the United States amid a monumental cultural reckoning surrounding the way we behave in the office,…
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Anish Kapoor Does His Part For Refugees While Another Artist Sets A Trap For Him
After Anish Kapoor was awarded the 2017 Genesis Prize, he pledged to donate the $1 million that accompany the award to causes aiding refugees. But the sculptor, most famous for his Chicago work “Cloud Gate,” colloquially known as “The Bean,” is also planning to make a difference with his art. A new drawing by Kapoor…
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Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part Four: Natalia Ginzburg
There it was, in Natalia Ginzburg’s obituary in The New York Times: A quick description, not even a full sentence, of the trouble of being a woman writer. It was 1991, and Ginzburg, born to a Jewish father and Catholic mother in Palermo, Sicily, in 1916, was seen as one of the great Italian authors…
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Rodgers And Hammerstein Are Making A Bundle With Ariana Grande’s ‘7 Rings’
There may be no hit more ubiquitous for the musical team of Rodgers and Hammerstein than “My Favorite Things.” Despite being written by two Jews and sung, in its original context, by an ex-nun to her charges during a thunderstorm in an Austrian summer estate, the tune from “The Sound of Music” developed an unshakable…
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Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part Three: Fran Ross
Fran Ross was black and Jewish, and she wanted you to know just how difficult that identity could be to manage. In her only novel, “Oreo” (1974), the Jewish Samuel Schwartz and black Helen (Honeychile) Clark make a match, an attachment that provokes outrageous reactions in both their parents. “When Honeychile had broken the news…
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Why We Don’t Talk About Jewish Poverty — And Why We Should
In 1972, the journalist Paul Cowan spent weeks roaming Manhattan’s Lower East Side on assignment for The Village Voice, searching for the Jewish poor. He didn’t have to look far. “Most people think of the Jewish immigration as the most spectacularly successful one in American history,” Cowan wrote, “but the 50-year journey from the shtetl…
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In A First, A Major Museum Turns Down A Gift From The Sackler Family
In a landmark move, London’s National Portrait Gallery has decided not to take money from the Sackler family — at least for now. The gallery and the Sackler Trust jointly announced Tuesday that a £1 million gift the Sacklers awarded the museum in 2016 for the development of the museum’s £35.5m “Inspiring People” project would…
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