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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The Most Notable Jewish Books Of The Year
The books of 2018 brought fresh perspectives, vital voices and new ways to examine questions of identity, history and even literature itself. And many of the best were authored by members of the tribe. Admittedly, we’re a bit biased, so don’t take our word for it: Look to The New York Times Book Review, which…
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Steven Berkoff Is Writing A Harvey Weinstein Play — And He Wants To Star
Actor and playwright Steven Berkoff wants to stage and star in a production of “Harvey.” No, not the 1944 Mary Chase comedy about an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit, but a new, one-act, one-man show about the very visible movie mogul and alleged sex offender Harvey Weinstein. “I like evil people,” Berkoff said in a November 20…
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Daniel Kahn’s Dark Album Is Perfect For Dark Times
“The Butcher’s Share,” the new album by Yiddish-punk outfit Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird, could hardly be more timely. Drawing from and building upon the great tradition of Yiddish songs of resistance – partisan songs, worker’s anthems, gangster ballads – Kahn’s latest album speaks directly to the urgent political challenges of our time and…
The Latest
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Why Thankfulness And Gratitude Are Jewish Emotions
For most of my life, I didn’t consider gratitude a particularly Jewish emotion. Quite the contrary. I grew up a secular Jew, my cultural knowledge filtered through Neil Simon and Philip Roth more than the Talmud or rabbis. So to me, anxiety, guilt, resentment, constant nervousness about diseases like sciatica and bursitis — those were…
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Historian Ron Chernow Will Hold Dais At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Next year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner may not be as controversial — or funny — as this year’s. The WHCA announced on November that Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer-winning biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and John D. Rockefeller, will be the featured speaker of the festivities on April 27, 2019. The selection of Chernow…
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Film & TV With ‘The Kominsky Method’ Chuck Lorre Gets The Netflix Boost
A welcome, if counterintuitive, symptom of the age of Netflix has been the revival of old Hollywood careers. It may have all started with 2015’s “Grace and Frankie” which gave a starring platform to Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, whom studios had tended to neglect or bury in grandma roles. In “Grace and Frankie” Tomlin…
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How seltzer won Israel’s war for independence
'Cast a Giant Shadow' is like 'Exodus' with a shpritz bottle
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Art How Rube Goldberg Made America Complicated Again
You push a button. A spring releases a bowling ball, which hurtles down a ramp toward a switch that uncages a bird, whose beak twirls a dial that activates the printer that spits out your ticket. That’s not actually how admission to “The Art of Rube Goldberg” works, but it’s how the legendary cartoonist might…
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A Seder For Thanksgiving Is The Trick To A Peaceful Holiday
I’d be surprised if anyone’s Thanksgiving ever looked like Norman Rockwell’s iconic Saturday Evening Post cover. Even if you Photoshopped in some diverse complexions, it’s the harmony of the gathering — its radiant togetherness — that makes it seem so unearthly. Where’s the divorcing couple insisting that you take a side? Where’s your drunk uncle…
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Art Remembering Oskar Rabin, Soviet Painter, Dissident And Exile
Oskar Rabin, a leading figure in subversive Soviet art who first gained international attention for hanging from a moving bulldozer, died November 7 in Florence. He was 90 years old. Rabin was in Florence for an exhibition of his work, The New York Times reports. The filmmaker Evgeny Smoljanski, who directed a documentary about the…
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Film & TV In A Conservative Israeli Town, She Came Out As Trans. This Documentary Tracks Her Journey.
The Israeli documentary “Family in Transition” has a happy ending. Sort of. The film, directed by Ofir Trainin, is about the Tzuk family — father Amit, mother Galit and their four children — who live in Nahariya, Israel’s northernmost coastal city. Amit and Galit run a successful software design and programming firm. But four years…
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