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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Art
What Jews Might Have Lost In the Fire at Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral
As flames devastated Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral on April 15, more than just a worldwide center of Catholic worship and an architectural masterpiece was threatened. Jewish history is also reflected in the cathedral, for better and for worse. When its massive construction began almost one thousand years ago, Notre-Dame de Paris reflected theological messages that…
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How Notre Dame Became A Symbol Of Inclusion For All Of Us
In early 1981, Pope John Paul II announced his choice as the new Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger. Not only did Lustiger share the pope’s youth and dynamism, but he apparently shared his ethnic background. Lustiger was, in fact, widely (and not always kindly) known as “the Pole”—a reference to his parental heritage. Upon being…
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Wins Pulitzer For Tree Of Life Coverage
On April 15, the Pulitzer Prize announced its 2019 winners and finalists in the fields of journalism, literature and drama. Among the winners was the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which was recognized in the category of Breaking News Reporting for coverage of the Tree of Life shooting. The Post-Gazette was lauded for reporting that…
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Art The Washington Post Condemns School District Apology Over ‘Jewish People’ Drawing
A month after a Virginia high school student’s drawing solicited concerns from community members who believed the artwork to be anti-Semitic, The Washington Post ran an editorial condemning the school district’s official response as “a groveling apology” with a “feeble reference to students’ First Amendment rights.” The editorial was titled “A High Schooler’s Controversial Artwork…
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Why Hank Greenberg Understood Jackie Robinson’s Struggles
Editor’s Note: In honor of Jackie Robinson Day, the Forward is revisiting this story about the relationship between Robinson and Detroit slugger Hank Greenberg. Anyone who has seen the film “42” would be horrified at the hostility Jackie Robinson faced from his teammates and opposing players and catcalling from the stands when he integrated Major…
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This Haggadah Is Different From All Other Haggadot
Faith and Freedom: Passover Haggadah with Commentary from the Writings of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits edited by Dr. Reuven Mohl Urim Publications, 159 pages, $24.95 “What is Freedom?” is a good question for Seder night. A new Haggadah offers a surprising answer. “Faith and Freedom” — compiled by Reuven Mohl, a dentist (full disclosure: he’s my…
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When 250 Orthodox Jewish Immigrants Worked As Extras For Cecil B. DeMille
Among the thousands of extras Cecil B. DeMille hired for his original, silent version of “The Ten Commandments” were 250 Orthodox Jewish immigrants, newly arrived in Los Angeles from Eastern Europe The director hoped that they would lend a sense of human verisimilitude to the project: “We believed rightly that, both in appearance and in…
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The Secret Jewish History of Tax Day
Like it or not — and who among us actually likes it — come April 15, you will need to have filed your income tax return with the Internal Revenue Service. Perhaps one way to feel better about the painful and often inconvenient process is to recognize that it has roots in the biblical concept…
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Novelist Joshua Furst On His Book ‘Revolutionaries,’ Abbie Hoffman And Countercultures
Rare is the Jew who doesn’t bring up his or her parents in a therapy session. As the tribe that created psychoanalysis, we may be predisposed to thinking our childhoods were messed up. But few Jews can claim they spent their early years waiting for the homecoming of their famous fugitive father or hanging around…
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Film & TV New York’s First Nelly Kaplan Retrospective Pays Tribute To A Fierce, Forgotten Filmmaker
Like the fierce women she committed to the screen, the young Nelly Kaplan was a risk-taker, unafraid to break barriers, or, for that matter, marriages. The Argentinian-born director arrived in France in 1953. She was 22, didn’t speak a word of French and had a meager $50 to her name, but within two years she…
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Adult Swim’s ‘Lazor Wulf’ Is A Show About A Laser Wolf, Not The ‘Fiddler’ Butcher, Lazar Wolf
Lazar Wolf is a creation of the great Yiddish fiction writer Sholem Aleichem. He is Anatevka’s village butcher. In “Fiddler on the Roof,” the 1964 musical treatment of Aleichem’s Tevye the Milk Man stories, Wolf is best remembered for being a wealthy older suitor to Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel. He doesn’t end up marrying her (Motel…
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