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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Some Advice About What To Read On Passover
There’s a nice seasonal post from Martha Anne Toll that’s being republished over at The Millions today. In it, Toll recommends eight books to read over the course of the Passover holiday, particularly in our current climate of “persecution and forced emigration,” as she puts it. The choices include titles by Aharon Appelfeld, Lucette Lagnado…
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In Trump’s America, It’s Hard To Be A Hyper-Realist
After four decades as a sculptor, Carole Feuerman is going into retail. Her new venture’s not as removed from her art as it sounds. One of the world’s most acclaimed hyperrealist sculptors, Feuerman struck a deal with New York City arts not-for-profit Chashama to produce her debut retail collection this spring. Proceeds from sales of…
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Is The Controversial Whitney Biennial Just A Bunch of Bologna?
It has now been nearly two weeks since I visited the Whitney Biennial (delayed a year by the 2016 relocation of the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City, from the Marcel Breuer building on 75th and Madison to the Renzo Piano-designed space in the Meatpacking District, at the foot of the High…
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In These Dark Times, Turn To Paul Celan
In a time in which the world is increasingly dangerous, cruel, alienating, and above all, incomprehensible, we might find comfort, or at least kinship, in works of poetry. One such poet, whose inventive use of language is marked by despair and resurrection (as we shall see), seems, to me, particularly worth revisiting. To read Paul…
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Why Elijah Will Have Some Company At This Year’s Passover Seder
We usually divide up the holidays: Yom Kippur breakfast at our daughter Samantha’s; Rosh Hashanah dinner at our apartment, and Seder at our daughter Lisa’s. Making out my grocery list this year — I’m responsible for the matzo ball soup and gefilte fish — I suddenly thought about Libby and felt a rush of emotion….
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As We Celebrate Our Exodus, Let’s Not Forget Our Role In Slavery
While most of New Orleans sits down to a dinner of red beans and rice, our seders will be beginning for us — porch doors flung open to let in Elijah (and the season’s first mosquitoes), bottles of wine clustered like brass quintets on tables as the corner church bells strike six. It’s Passover Louisiana…
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A New Take On An Old Heist, And More To Read, Watch, And Do This Weekend
Sometimes we all feel the need to throw off constraints; some just do so with greater aspirations towards humor than others. While Zach Braff’s reinterpretation of “Going in Style” starring Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, and Samuel L. Jackson, has so far met mixed reviews, its leads are reliable comedic talents. In the film, the three…
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What Is It With The Government And The Holocaust?
Ever since its first days, the Trump Administration has had an issue with its Holocaust history. First there was Trump’s ridiculously short, vapid Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, in which he insinuated that Jews should be grateful that Trump took the time to make any kind of statement at all. And now, in a very slightly…
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Did Brian Williams Really Quote Leonard Cohen To Praise Syria Strike?
The United States’s strike on a Syrian airfield has generated confusion across the political spectrum, from President Trump’s far-right supporters’ anger at the move to the guarded approbation of usual Trump skeptics like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Perhaps the most confusing response, though, came from MSNBC’s Brian Williams, who, discussing the strike on his…
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Why ScarJo’s Whitewashed ‘Ghost’ Is A Jewish Assimilation Parable
“When we see our uniqueness as a virtue, only then can we find peace,” Chief Daisuke Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano) declares in the new 2017 live action reboot of the classic Japanese anime “Ghost in the Shell.” It’s an ironic moral for a film that is already infamous for its whitewashed casting. If the film really…
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For Better And Worse, Don Rickles Embodied American Discourse
Don Rickles, who died on April 6 at age 90, weathered over a half-century of comedic trends, seeing his insult humor absorbed into everyday conduct. He was not always an insult comedian. Raised in the Jackson Heights area of Queens by his parents, Max Rickles and Etta Feldman, Rickles studied at the American Academy of…
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