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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Art
Can Germany Teach Jews Anything About Israel?
Midway through the Jewish Museum Berlin’s exhibit “Welcome to Jerusalem,” a sprawling tour through the Holy City, one finds a particularly unsettling image. No, it isn’t an especially gruesome crucifixion, a battle scene of the Crusades or a photograph of carnage after a terrorist attack. The offending picture shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gripping…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates To Take On ‘Captain America,’ In Footsteps Of Jack Kirby
Starting this summer, Ta-Nehisi Coates will take the reins of a beloved comic book series created by the Jewish cartoonists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby: “Captain America.” Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of several books, including the National Book Award-winning “Between the World and Me,” has authored Marvel Comics’ “Black Panther”…
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38 Nobel Laureates, In Letter To Erdoğan, Protest Turkey’s ‘Wrongful Conviction Of Writers And Thinkers’
Today, 38 Nobel Laureates published an open letter in The Guardian urging Turkey’s President Erdoğan to reverse course on the steady erosion of civil liberties seen under his administration since an attempted coup in 2016. The letters signatories include 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature Svetlana Alexievich, 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics Serge Haroche, 2004 Nobel…
The Latest
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The Secret Jewish History Of The Kit Kat Jingle
Last March, a few days before Purim, I happened to catch a new episode of Food 52’s “Burnt Toast” podcast. The entire episode was devoted to the unusual history of what a 2003 University of Cincinnati study declared was one of the top ten earworms of all time: the “Gimme a Break!” Kit Kat jingle….
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Remembering Cynthia Heimel, Who Wrote Frankly On Sex And Womanhood
Cynthia Heimel, who frankly commented on sex, dating and the absurdities of New York City life in publications including New York Magazine, Vogue and Playboy, passed away on February 25 at age 70. In addition to her columns, Heimel wrote seven books, among them the cult classic “Sex Tips For Girls.” The Washington Post reports…
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Q & A: In ‘Back Talk,’ Danielle Lazarin Excavates Women’s Unspoken Feelings
The title story in Danielle Lazarin’s new collection, “Back Talk,” subtly articulates why young women choose to stay silent about difficult experiences. A rumor spreads about the main character’s sexual activity, and her classmates quickly condemn her without asking for her side of the story. Lazarin writes, “it’s easy to believe what you hear when…
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How Vashti Said No — And Faced The Consequences
Every time a scandal erupts around the sexual behavior of a powerful man, someone seems to ask, “Well, why didn’t she say no?” It so happens that the Book of Esther begins with the story of a woman who “says no,” and it demonstrates that the consequences of “saying no” can be severe: Queen Vashti…
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What Do The Paintings ‘Jacob And His Twelve Sons,’ Once A Political Weapon In England, Mean Today?
If you’d like to see the face of the biblical patriarch Jacob, or that of any one of his twelve sons, you must take a big step back to do so. The individual portraits arranged around one long, large room at the Frick Collection demand it. Nearly seven feet tall and hung roughly a yard…
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What It Means To Grow Up Jewish in Chicago
Growing up Jewish in Chicago means you’re perversely proud of the fact that you didn’t grow up in New York. Growing up Jewish in Chicago means you actually grew up in Chicago — not in Skokie, Evanston, Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove or any of the other suburbs where Jews started to flee when real estate…
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André Aciman Confronts Exile And Desire
When André Aciman was 14 years old, his family was expelled from Egypt. He has returned only once, 30 years after his departure, he told me in January over coffee on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “I realized that I’ve always hated Egypt, I never liked it,” he said. Still, the experience of living in and…
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Film & TV The Hollywood Directors Who Filmed Concentration Camp Liberations
Three iconic Hollywood directors — John Ford, George Stevens, and Samuel Fuller — may have created their most important work for the U.S. Armed Forces and Secret Services during World War II. As a new temporary exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) reveals, the filmmakers documented conditions in newly liberated Nazi…
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