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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Why Charles Jordan’s Death Remains A Puzzling Cold War Mystery
Charles Jordan was known as the “Father of Refugees” for good reason. Through the most tumultuous years of the 20th century, he devoted his life to helping Jews and later Palestinians, Vietnamese and others flee war, oppression and conflict, earning a global reputation for shaping the understanding of refugees and the issues connected to their…
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Ben Platt Is Leaving ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ Here Are Some Of His Remarkable Performances.
In the title role of “Dear Evan Hansen,” Ben Platt has won a series of theatrical accolades, including the 2017 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, that have made him a household name. Now, the 23-year-old actor is planning his next steps. Platt took to Twitter today to confirm that his last performance…
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Can Louis Kahn’s Quintessentially American Music Boat Be Saved?
“How important is your thumb on your right hand?” Richard Saul Wurman asked, before he answered his own question: “It’s not as important as your whole arm, or your lungs.” “Lou’s reputation as a great architect will live without this boat. But it’s really nice that it is recognized.” Wurman, an author, architect and founder…
The Latest
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Jewish Director Puts Richard Wagner On Trial — At His Own Festival
Scholars have long argued whether Richard Wagner left traces of his anti-Semitic convictions in his opera, for example, by encoding characters with stereotypically Jewish traits. When Barrie Kosky directed a “Ring Cycle” in Hannover between 2009 and 2011, the Australian director didn’t have a shred of doubt. For him, the duplicitous dwarf Mime (the cycle’s…
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Film & TV The Secret Jewish History of Nuclear War Movies
As Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un engage in nuclear brinkmanship, very real fears of a nuclear Armageddon have emerged. Given that Armageddon has a Hebrew origin (via the Greek translation of Har Meggido), it is not surprising that Jews have had a considerable interest in nuclear apocalypse. Consider the title of MAD magazine, echoing 1950s…
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Allen, Baumbach, And More Highlights Of 55th New York Film Festival
The 55th New York Film Festival, descending on the Lincoln Center from September 28 to October 15, will include new films by Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach, in its showcase of the year’s most prominent independent and international films. The festival’s Main Slate will feature Allen’s “Wonder Wheel,” set in 1950s Coney Island, as its…
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Why Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Chelm Stories Aren’t Just For Children
This Month Anne Reads: ”The Fools of Chelm and Their History,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1902 in Leonim, Poland and died in Florida in 1991. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize for literature bringing joy to Jews everywhere. This came as a vindication of our gifts to the…
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65 Years Ago, The USSR Murdered Its Greatest Jewish Poets. What’s Left Of Their Legacy?
For nearly four decades, no one knew exactly how many Soviet Jews were secretly executed by the Soviet Union in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison on August 12, 1952. A 1970 New York Times report on the fate of Yiddish in the USSR claimed the victims numbered around 30. A 1972 volume commemorating the…
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Why There’s More To Israeli Literature Than Just Hebrew
An unusual session at the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem chaired by prominent literary critic Dan Laor celebrated the contributions to Israeli literature of writers writing in languages other than Hebrew. For anyone familiar with Israeli literary history, the subject itself is a big deal — because for decades, non-Hebrew writing was discouraged…
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Are The Safdie Brothers The Next Great New York Filmmakers?
The most memorable images of “Good Time,” the new film by brothers and co-directors Josh and Benny Safdie, are those of its protagonist Constantine “Connie” Nikas (Robert Pattinson) in desperate, unceasing motion. There’s Connie fleeing a crime scene in a convulsive sprint, there he is gliding ominously along the highways of eastern Queens in stolen…
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Art The Lost Photographs Of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Editor’s Note In the summer of 2016, the Brooklyn Historical Society’s exhibit “Truman Capote’s Brooklyn” brought new attention to the late photographer David Attie. Attie, who died in 1982, was perhaps best known for his portraits of such luminaries as Capote, Lorraine Hansberry, Leonard Bernstein, Bobby Fischer and Ralph Ellison. Attie had been a commercial…
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