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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The Secret Jewish History Of The World Cup
The World Cup comes around every four years, just like the Olympic Games, except the Olympics are for amateurs. And if you’re an American, chances are you are indifferent at best or totally oblivious at worst about the single thing that, more than any other, unites all humanity. The World Cup is reportedly the most…
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The Melodramatic, Bloated, Indulgent Brilliance of Luchino Visconti
On April 15, 1944, in Rome, Fascist soldiers captured Luchino Visconti di Modrone, the Count of Lonate Pozzolo. Since the late thirties, the Count had been a loyal Communist, sheltering party members in his mansion and even selling family jewels to fund Mussolini’s defeat. As Peter Bondanella explains in “A History of Italian Cinema,” Visconti…
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It Took A Move To Alaska, A Moose And Four Years Without Plumbing For Me To Find My Jewish Soul
According to family lore, my great-grandmother had three sets of dentures: One for dairy, one for meat and one for Passover. I fear she would be rolling in her grave if she knew that I lived without running water for four years. It’s debatable whether I maintained one set of clean dishes; the prospect of…
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Music My Dad, Leonard Bernstein, Introduced Us To The Beatles
The following is an excerpt from “Famous Father Girl,” by Jamie Bernstein. Copyright © 2018 by Jamie Bernstein. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. In February of 1964, halfway through my sixth-grade year, the Beatles came to America. By coincidence, Aunt Shirley was returning from a trip to England on the same…
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Lev Dodin, One Of Russia’s Great Directors, Confronts A Loveless World
I have been thinking, recently, about the prevalence of female suicide in literature. It started when I saw Simon Stone’s update of Federico García Lorca’s play “Yerma,” in which the unnamed main character kills herself, driven mad by her inability to conceive a child. I was troubled by the choice; in the original “Yerma,” the…
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‘The Band’s Visit’ Sweeps Up Tonys
UPDATED: Based on one of Israel’s most celebrated movies — the multiple Ophir-winning “Bikur HaTizmoret” (“The Band’s Visit,” 2007) by Eran Kolirin — “The Band’s Visit” is this year’s surprise Broadway hit. The musical debuted with Tony Shalhoub (“Monk” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) playing — and singing! — alongside Katrina Lenk (who recently starred…
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The Night We Lost The Messiah Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
The balcony curtains suddenly parted. The Rebbe sat motionless surrounded by his three trusted rabbinical aides. On cue, the singing and chanting began: “Long live our Master, Teacher and Rebbe, King Messiah, Forever and Ever!” Hundreds of men dressed in black suits stood shoulder to shoulder on the synagogue floor craning their necks towards the…
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WATCH: How The Jews Of The Vilna Ghetto Saved Precious Books From Nazis
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. A group of several dozen Jewish intellectuals known as the Paper Brigade risked their lives to save thousands of books and documents from destruction during the Holocaust by hiding them in the Vilna ghetto. The Yiddish Forward spoke with Dr. David Fishman, author of the recent book…
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Seymour Hersh’s Rise From Dry Cleaner To America’s Supersnoop
Reporter: A Memoir By Seymour M. Hersh Knopf, 352 pp, $27.95 The exploits of Lowell Bergman, Carl Bernstein, David Corn, Michael Isikoff, Lucy Komisar, Sydney Schanberg, and I.F. Stone might lead one to conclude that investigative journalism is as Jewish a profession as stand-up comedy and matzoh baking. Dubbed “a national treasure” by David Halberstam,…
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In ‘Picnic At Hanging Rock,’ Jewish And Other Mysteries
“I know when there’s girls together there is trouble,” says Reg Lumley, a side character in the new Amazon miniseries “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” The series is based loosely on Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel, and was also adapted by Peter Weir in his landmark 1975 film. The six-part television interpretation depicts girls and women living…
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My Father’s Day Regrets
The fellow who came up with the idea of Father’s Day was probably some poor haberdasher hoping to prompt children to buy ties and shirts, if you want to be cynical about it, but also, one hopes, wanting to allow those children to express their appreciation for their Dads. For many of us, however, particularly…
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