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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What These Jews Will Be Sneak-Reading During High Holiday Services
When Rabbi Edward Feld was a teenager, he decided to buy a seat for High Holidays services in a synagogue where no one knew his name. Feld was raised on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and he says that there were always old synagogues that weren’t completely full even on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. By…
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Does Russian Studies Have An ‘Alt-Right’ Problem?
A searing essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education calls on the field of Russian Studies to acknowledge the tie between Russia and white supremacy. “David Duke, Richard Spencer, and other white-supremacist leaders have longstanding ties to Russia and Ukraine,” writes Sarah Valentine, who has a PhD in Russian literature from Princeton, and is the…
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New York Values Run Amuck: Ex-Socialists Teach Dogs Commands In Yiddish
There are certain objects and behaviors that are unquestionable hallmarks of New York: bagels with smoked fish, ill-disguised fury at tourists who walk too slowly, humans dressed as Elmo accosting the unwitting in Times Square. But for those like Ted Cruz, who in a long-past era — could it be possible I’m remembering it with…
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The World of Arthur Szyk
In his 1944 self-portrait, “Ink and Blood,” Polish-Jewish artist and illustrator Arthur Szyk, who immigrated to the United States after Nazi Germany invaded his homeland, depicts himself hunched diligently over an elegant working desk, hard at work on a new painting. Its subject, who has come partially to life but remains pinned to the paper…
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Pussyhat Founder Takes On Immigration In New Blanket Project
For Jayna Zweiman, the Pussyhat Project was always going to be tough to top. With the global women’s march on January 21st, the ubiquitous hand-knit pink hat achieved unique cultural significance and has since been featured on the cover of Time Magazine, acquired by the V&A Museum in London and adorned the heads of many…
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Art How Black Culture Taught Me What It Means To Be Jewish
On Tuesday, September 26th — in front of my most intimate friends and a handful of random Brooklynites who thought “sure, I’ll go” — I will finally become a Bat Mitzvah girl at the age of 26. Under Littlefield Brooklyn’s brazen lights, this proud queer/power Jewess will cascade into womanhood at “Rachel and Rachel’s Queer/Black…
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These Are The All-Time Best Jewish Moments In Movies And On TV
Most Accurate Wedding Sequence: “Have Gun Will Travel,” ‘A Drop of Blood’ 1961 The length and accuracy of this scene is owed entirely to Shimon Wincelberg, a long-time Hollywood television scriptwriter who worked on everything from “Star Trek” to “Law and Order.” His melodious Ashkenazi chanting is dubbed over the actor’s in this scene—his only…
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Film & TV A (Not-So) Brief History of Every Jewish Ritual Ever Seen On Film Or TV
I had unconsciously trained myself, as an observant Jew living among other observant Jews, to watch all television at a remove. McDonald’s ads didn’t affect me; the sandwiches on screen barely registered as food. I wore a yarmulke, but had no expectation that anyone on screen would do the same. I identified with characters and…
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Was Obama The ‘Most Jewish’ President Ever?
(JTA) — He was just 24, but speechwriter David Litt had already become President Obama’s go-to guy for anything considered “kishke-related.” In Litt’s parlance, that meant he wrote the president’s speeches that aimed to connect with Jewish Americans on a gut level — things like holiday and anniversary commemorations, but not, say, Israel or foreign…
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Music Why The Village Voice Was Crazy To Put Bob Dylan On Its Last Cover
Had I been eating soup when I saw the cover of this week’s farewell issue of the Village Voice, I would have spit up. There, on the cover, is a full-page photograph of Bob Dylan, circa 1965, taken in Greenwich Village, saluting the camera in a manner which, one supposes, could be viewed as a…
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Film & TV Jerry Seinfeld’s New Netflix Special Doesn’t Matter — Does That Matter?
There’s a scene toward the end of Jerry Seinfeld’s new Netflix special “Jerry Before Seinfeld” where the man himself is sitting cross-legged in the middle of a street just behind a single accordion folder. The road surface is paved with notepad paper taken from that folder in which he stored every single stand up joke…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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Opinion American Jews were played — now what?
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