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
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
The Latest
-
Gothamist’s 4 Best Jewish Articles — From Mitzvah Tanks To Gefilte Fish
This morning, those of us who pine for quality local journalism woke up to a startling sight: Actual good news. A consortium of local radio stations, including New York’s WNYC, Washington D.C.’s WAMU and Southern California’s KPCC announced they had banded together to revive beloved local news organizations Gothamist and DNAInfo. As Wired reports, Billionaire…
-
David Mamet, Doing The Seemingly Inevitable, Has Written A Play About Harvey Weinstein
LOS ANGELES, Feb 23 (Reuters) – David Mamet has written a new play about film producer Harvey Weinstein, the Pulitzer Prize winner said in an interview published on Friday. Timing for production of the play, currently titled “Bitter Wheat,” is still to be determined, the report said. “I was talking with my Broadway producer and…
-
Film & TV In ‘The Young Karl Marx’ Raoul Peck Found The Man Behind The Myth. He Told Us How.
Raoul Peck’s latest film, “The Young Karl Marx”, is above all a story of clashing ideas. The film follows adversaries-turned-best-buds Marx and Friedrich Engels as they attempt to both understand and subvert the capitalist system. Inevitably, the film traces the conflicts that arise when radical thinkers try to change the world. The material may sound…
-
Her Stunningly Intimate Photographs Of Hasidic Life
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. On the coldest day of the year, the Polish photographer Agnieszka Traczewska stands in a snowbound forest an hour’s car ride from Krakow. Dressed in thermal pants and a black scarf, Traczewska has lost track of time in her quest to get a shot of her usually…
-
How A Jewish Artist Reclaimed ‘Mein Kampf’
Gideon Rubin wasn’t expecting a package on that spring morning a year ago, although his wife, Silia Ka Tung, had been having strange things delivered to their London flat for months. Rubin, an Israeli-born painter, was working on a project that would be exhibited at London’s Freud Museum for the 80th anniversary of the psychoanalyst’s…
-
Do Israeli Writers Still Care About Israeli Literature?
The prominent literary critic and editor Yigal Schwartz has published a new book that considers why Israeli readers are reading less Israeli literature in favor of work in translation — and it is sparking passionate conversation in literary circles in Israel. Schwartz is the senior literary editor for Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, the largest publisher in…
-
Music Former Table Tennis National Champion, Maccabiah Games Competitor to Appear in New York Philharmonic
Michael Landers, a former national table tennis champion who competed in 2013’s Maccabiah Games, is set to appear in his New York Philharmonic debut on February 20, in Andy Akiho’s concerto “Ricochet.” While the New York Times reports that Landers has perfect pitch and a fondness for bassoon, it his table tennis prowess that will…
-
Barbara Harshav Is First Hebrew And Yiddish Translator To Win Lifetime Achievement Award
Barbara Harshav, a translator of Hebrew and Yiddish literature, will receive this year’s prestigious PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, given every three years to recognize an outstanding translator for lifetime achievement. Harshav is the first Hebrew or Yiddish translator to receive the award — and in the world of Jewish literature, Harshav’s win is being…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
- 2
Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens
- 3
Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
- 4
News Abdul El-Sayed is courting Jewish voters — without moderating his views on Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Trump nominee defends college cartoon of Jewish student with devil horns at Senate hearing
-
Fast Forward Former antisemitic activist Lucas Gage explains to Jewish podcast why he left the movement
-
Sports This year’s biggest World Cup upset came from its most Jew-ish team
-
Fast Forward JD Vance: Israeli Cabinet shouldn’t be criticizing ‘only powerful ally’ left in the world