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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Film & TV For Olivier Assayas, The Past Is Always Present
Olivier Assayas’s 1994 film “Cold Water” was a coming of age film in more ways than one. A teen romance set in the heady aftermath of Paris’s May ’68 uprising, the film showcases adolescent angst, romance, and the friction that accompanies the first encounters with something larger than oneself. For Assayas, it also represents, “The…
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Local News Can Be For The People Even If It’s Not By The People
I don’t know if Timothy Burke is going to save journalism, let alone democracy, but the spooky video he made for Deadspin at the end of March racked up 30 million views within a week and got the country gasping at Sinclair Broadcast Group’s fake anti-fake-news campaign. Burke, though, will need to pit what he…
The Latest
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First Step To An All-Yiddish ‘Fiddler On The Roof’? Dance Auditions.
During the cherry-blossomed blush of the first proper week of spring, on the same day Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced which musicians would accompany 2018’s most hotly-anticipated nuptials, a group of men across the pond from Kensington Palace rehearsed for another famous wedding. “Hot toe! Hot toe! And heel,” choreographer Staš Kmieć yelled at…
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Want to Understand Putin’s Russia? Read “Dressed Up For A Riot.”
In response to the scandal surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election, American media outlets have presented the Kremlin as a breeding ground for complex schemes and ruthless espionage, and have cast Vladimir Putin as an eccentric mastermind. These commentators would do well to read Michael Idov’s “Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin’s Moscow,” a…
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Theater Are We Ready To Reckon With ‘The Merchant Of Venice’?
In May 1943, at Vienna’s Burg theater, the Nazi party staged its most famous production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” It starred Werner Krauss, a man so anti-Semitic that he is said to have asked Joseph Goebbels to make a public announcement clarifying that he was not Jewish, but rather habitually played Jewish caricatures…
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Books 5 Reasons To Read The Bible — Even Though GQ Says You Shouldn’t
A list of “21 Books You Don’t Have To Read” by GQ seems to exist to give 21 pretentious people the opportunity to describe the specific ways in which they are pretentious. The fact is, there is only one book in the world you absolutely should not read, and that is “Lolita”, a diamond-covered trashcan…
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The Diamond Setter: A Gloriously Immersive Journey Into Modern Israel
The Diamond Setter By Moshe Sakal Translated by Jessica Cohen Other Press, 304 pages, $15.95 If you enjoy richly plotted intergenerational stories inspired by true events, Moshe Sakal’s “The Diamond Setter” offers bountiful pleasures. Born in Tel Aviv and now a resident of Jaffa, Sakal is the scion of a Syrian-Egyptian Jewish family whose colorful…
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Why Israel Is The Cultural Center Of The Jewish World
At the age of seventy, Israel is the cultural center of the Jewish world. Whether in the fields of literature or cinema, theater, dance, or food, Israel can no longer be described as one hub among many, equal in standing to that which continues to be produced in Europe or the United States. Rather, Hebrew…
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Remember That Time Barbra Streisand Chatted With Golda Meir?
Despite recent appearances in duds like “Meet the Fockers” and “Guilt Trip,” Barbra Streisand, who turned 76 on April 24, is a living, breathing legend. Her awards number greater than the population of some small European nations: She’s one of a handful of performers who has won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Tony, and an…
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The Secret Jewish History of William Shakespeare
Had William Shakespeare never died, he would be turning 454 years old this month, which would put him in biblical territory for longevity. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily such an unusual place for him to be. While little is known about the historical Shakespeare, there is much to suggest in his work and…
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Is The NFL’S Anti-Semitism Hurting Josh Rosen’s Draft Stock?
Ever since I first embraced the mad romance of sports’ fandom as a boy, a romance that I have never outgrown, I just assumed that the reason there weren’t more Jewish professional athletes is that Jews weren’t very good at sports. A genetic thing. Sure, there was an occasional Hank Greenberg or Al Rosen or…
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