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
-
Film & TV 8 young Jewish comedians on what ‘SNL 50’ means to them
'Saturday Night Live' may be entering middle age, but these rising Jewish comics are just getting started.
-
Howard Jacobson’s ‘Pussy’ Grabs Trump — By The Book
Pussy By Howard Jacobson Random House 208 pages, $22.95 ‘I keep being told by people that I’m becoming a bit of a ranter,” Howard Jacobson warned me about halfway into our conversation. We were sitting, having tea, in the main room of his London apartment, which is framed at one end by floor-to-ceiling windows, as…
-
EXCLUSIVE: An Interview With Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Greg Pardlo
Nobody ever said a Trump presidency would be poetic, and it isn’t. From midnight tweets full of babyish interjections, to a press secretary who sometimes sounds like he’s reading a Ouija board, the English language has in a few short months taken a beating — much harsher, remarkably, than the one George W. Bush gave…
The Latest
-
Music Meet The Boston Red Sox Organist Who Got His Start At Shabbat Services
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Jewishbaseballmuseum.com Josh Kantor has performed everywhere from synagogues to orchestra pits, from seedy nightclubs to outdoor festival stages. But his favorite venue for playing music is Fenway Park, where he serves as the organist for the Boston Red Sox. A pianist since the age of five, Kantor (now…
-
Art New Center For Jewish History Head David Myers Shares His Vision For The Future
The Center for Jewish History has announced that its new President and Chief Executive Officer will be David N. Myers, the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History in the UCLA History Department, where he has taught for the past 25 years. Myers is also the author of such books as “Re-inventing the Jewish…
-
Jews Sweep Tonys As Bette Midler, Ben Platt And ‘Oslo’ Win Big
“Dear Evan Hansen,” the teen-angst driven musical about a high school outsider, won the top prize at Sunday’s Tony Awards, Broadway highest honors, while J.T. Rogers’ Mideast peace accord drama “Oslo” was named best play. The surprise hit musical won a total of six Tonys, including best musical actor for 23-year-old newcomer Ben Platt in…
-
Bette Midler, ‘Evan Hansen’ and ‘Oslo’ Lead Jewish Sweep At Tonys
In A Tony Awards marked predominantly by the predictable, the genuine surprises provided the most memorable entertainment. We could have done without host Kevin Spacey’s creaky impersonations of Johnny Carson and Bill Clinton, especially a weak joke at the expense of Hillary Clinton’s email servers. And some of the musical numbers failed to convey the…
-
Bringing A Talmudic Sage Back To Life
RABBI AKIVA: SAGE OF THE TALMUD By Barry W. Holtz Yale University Press, 248 pages, $25 When I was a rabbinical student, my teacher, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, told me that when he was a college student he interviewed with the legendary Solomon Schechter to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary for rabbinical school. Schechter asked…
-
Scott Turow’s New Book Takes On The Holocaust
‘I like my life, whatever I’m doing,” Scott Turow told me. “I get out of bed in the morning and I know that there’s something I’m going to look forward to, which is a blessed way of life.” Not so for his characters. “Someone pointed out to me that in all my books the characters…
-
An Injured Athlete, A 70-Something Therapist, A Very Surprising Friendship
Filled with energy, even after a very long day, I hopped into his black Range Rover. Well, hopped is a bit of an exaggeration. At 5 feet 1 inch tall, I actually strained to reach the floorboards, but I was pleased to be with him once I settled into the passenger seat. The two of…
-
7 Jewish Shows To Watch At The Tonys
(JTA) — Tonight is the biggest night of the year for theater lovers: It’s the Tony Awards. Unfortunately, our crystal ball is at the shop for repairs — so we can’t say with certainty who the winners will be. But there’s one thing that’s for sure: The past year has been a standout one for Jewish…
-
Alex Katz’s Subway Drawings Are Quiet, Lonely — And Surreal
There are a few common descriptors (or criticisms, however you want to read it) for the work of Jewish-American artist Alex Katz – that it’s flat, cartoonish, pop-artish but not in the intellectual (pseudo or otherwise) vein of Warhol and his ilk. These criticism-descriptions all seem fair, but I can’t help but think that, when levied…
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Hitler is trending on TikTok again — and they’re trying to make him seem like a nice guy
- 2
Culture You can buy Sukkot gift boxes that say ‘tuchus’ on Amazon
- 3
Fast Forward Sitcom star encourages non-Jews like her to hang mezuzahs on their homes
- 4
Opinion A maelstrom around Rashida Tlaib shows how broken discourse about the war has become
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture On Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, assessing the 39th president’s record on the Jews
-
Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
-
Looking Forward An Israeli hip-hop artist remembers a day of hope in Gaza
-
Sports The Jewish Sport Report: How the Chicago White Sox made a bad year even worse for Jewish fans
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism