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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Q&A: Photographers Jay Maisel And Stephen Wilkes On Their New Documentary And The Shots They Missed
When photographer Jay Maisel made the tough, but financially inevitable, decision to sell The Bank, his 35,000 square foot studio and home on Manhattan’s Bowery, Stephen Wilkes knew he had to commit its final days to film. The result is “Jay Myself,” a brisk documentary tour of Maisel’s past captured through the packing up of…
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Embattled Whitney Museum Vice Chair Resigns From Board Over Tear Gas, Gaza Outrage
In response to mounting pressure from artists and protests groups, Warren B. Kanders, the chief executive of police and military equipment company the Safariland Group, resigned from the board of the Whitney Museum on July 24. He had previously been a vice chair of that board, on which he sat for 13 years. “The targeted…
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Deborah Levy, Salman Rushdie And Margaret Atwood Make 2019 Booker Longlist
Murder, sex, dystopia and madness earned spots on the diverse longlist for the 2019 Booker Prize. The annual award, which honors the year’s best English-language novel published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, announced the 13 authors in the running on July 24. British author and playwright Deborah Levy is nominated for her book “The…
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At Philip Roth’s Estate Auction, Paying To Own A Piece Of Genius
Philip Roth had style, but he liked utilitarian things. He owned many lamps, all easily adjustable and fairly unpretty. His chairs were mostly comfortable and lived-in. He furnished his house with library tables of varying charm, and two radios that could kindly be described as aged. When he died at 85 on May 22, 2018,…
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Buried For Decades, These Roman Coins Might Identify Forgotten Victims Of The Holocaust
This February, homeowners in Keszthely, Hungary were working on renovations when they stumbled on a potentially historic find. While digging a hole in their cellar, the building owners discovered five sealed glass jars containing 2,800 gold and silver coins, many of them dating back to the Roman Empire. The question of to whom the coins…
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At Auschwitz, Yet Still Holding On To Their Faith
A special exhibition entitled “Through the Lens of Faith” opened just outside the gates of Auschwitz on Monday, July 1. A joint creation of Henri Lustiger-Thaler, architect/designer Daniel Libeskind, and photographer Caryl Englander, the exhibition portrays 21 survivors of Auschwitz: 18 Jews, two Roman Catholics and one Roma. They entered the gates of Auschwitz and…
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Ida Wyman, Trailblazing Street And Magazine Photographer, Dies At 93
Ida Wyman, whose keen-eyed photography captured both ordinary and larger-than-life subjects, died on July 13 in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. She was 93. Her death was reported by Monroe Galleries in Sante Fe, New Mexico, which represents Wyman’s work. Wyman was a trailblazing street and documentary photographer for Life and Look magazines who approached her craft with…
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Maurice Sendak’s Designs For Opera And Ballet Are A Testament To Joy
Maurice Sendak had many reasons to be unhappy. He was born to Polish Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn in 1928, and his childhood was defined by the deaths of his extended family in the Holocaust, a loss that scarred him early and deep. He was a gay man who, sure his parents wouldn’t accept him if…
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Updated: Artists Abandon Whitney Biennial Over Board Member’s Alleged Ties To IDF Violence In Gaza
Update, July 22, 12:17 p.m.: This version of the story includes news of additional withdrawals and new research suggesting one of Kanders’s businesses may have provided bullets used by the IDF during the 2018 Gaza protests. Eight artists have requested the removal of their work from the Whitney Biennial – a historic and often career-making…
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Was ‘North By Northwest’ Alfred Hitchcock’s Secretly Jewish Film?
The character Cary Grant plays in “North by Northwest” is a familiar one in Alfred Hitchcock’s films: An innocent everyman tangled in a web of intrigue that may wind up costing him his life. But the name of this character is different than the typical ones in Hitchcock’s work. He’s not L.B. Jeffries or John…
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The Secret Jewish History Of Roller Derby
Who would have thought that the roller derby, a roughhouse spectacle where skaters elbow and knee each other relentlessly, was really a Peaceable Kingdom of friendly violence and Yiddishkeit? The death in early July at age 87 of the American Jewish entrepreneur Jerry Seltzer, owner and manager of the last touring professional roller derby league,…
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