Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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Film & TV 8 young Jewish comedians on what ‘SNL 50’ means to them
'Saturday Night Live' may be entering middle age, but these rising Jewish comics are just getting started.
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After the Holocaust, A Jewish State in Saxony
Judenstaat By Simone Zelitch Tor Books, 320 pages, $12.99 Counterfactual history has never been more popular in American culture. The success of Amazon Prime’s recent hit series “The Man in the High Castle” (based on Philip K. Dick’s famous novel about the Nazis winning World War II) and the Hulu series “11.22.63” (based on Stephen…
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Remembering Seymour Papert: Revolutionary Socialist and Father of A.I.
The South African Jewish computer scientist and educator Seymour Papert, who died on July 31 at age 88, was a long-time fixture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He pioneered artificial intelligence and co-invented the Logo programming language. Yet his work as a social reformer, rather than with machines per se, was a primordial obsession….
The Latest
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Bernie Krause Played for Pete Seeger and Inspired an Animal Orchestra
Born in Detroit in 1938, for the past quarter-century Bernie Krause has traveled the world, capturing natural sounds of creatures and environments large and small. Since briefly replacing Pete Seeger in the folk-singing group “The Weavers” in 1963, Krause has gone on to contribute synthesizer performances to many feature films, including “Apocalypse Now.” His company,…
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50 Years After His Death, Lenny Bruce’s Spirit Lives On
How would you explain Lenny Bruce to someone who has never heard of him? You could say he was an American Jewish comedian born Leonard Alfred Schneider in October 1925, in Mineola, New York. Or that he died of a drug overdose 50 years ago, on August 3, 1966. You could say that after leaving…
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How a Talmud Class Helped Save My Marriage
After 36 years of fiercely devoted marriage, my husband and I are broke, anxious and disappointed. We hardly speak to each other, and when we do it is mostly to accuse and complain. Is it desperation, a search for solace or something more elusive that brings us to the most unlikely of places? One autumn…
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The Lessons They Didn’t Teach Me on Birthright
On the morning of November 25, 2014, broken windows lined St. Louis’s South Grand Boulevard. The previous night, the thriving commercial stretch next to Tower Grove Park had become a site for protests over the decision of a grand jury not to indict the white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson for the August 9…
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In Globe’s ‘Merchant of Venice,’ Shylock is The Victim
Last Saturday, roughly halfway through the first act of the Globe Theatre’s “The Merchant of Venice” at this year’s Lincoln Center Festival, your correspondent could be found, much to her astonishment, on the stage. She was there at the behest of Launcelot, played by Stefan Adegbola, Shylock’s comically rebellious servant. Indulging an internal debate over…
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In the Case of Shylock V. Antonio, Judge Ginsburg Presides
Vengeful. Bloodthirsty. Merciless. Jewish. William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” is practically synonymous with Shylock, the moneylending Jew who demands a pound of flesh from his Christian nemesis Antonio (the actual merchant of the title). But Shakespeare’s romantic-comedy-meets-courtroom-drama it is also full of thorny legal issues. Was there ever a demand for payment prior to…
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Keith Sachs Would Rather Be Collecting Art in Philadelphia
Clad in a glen plaid blazer and paisley tie, Keith Sachs, the white-haired Philadelphia art collector, pointed to a Dan Flavin sculpture from his collection. “The Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Robert Rosenblum),” consists of a white fluorescent bulb installed diagonally on the wall. “He needed some money, because he was getting married at…
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How ‘Golem’ Appropriated a Jewish Myth for the Smartphone Era
I was excited for the London theater company 1927’s new play “Golem,” written and directed by Suzanne Andrade, which plays at the Lincoln Center Festival through July 31st. Really, I was. From Pete Hamill’s “Snow in August” to Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” every representation of the golem – in Jewish…
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The Secret Jewish History of Lollapalooza
In the league of “be careful what you wish for,” near the top must rank the Lollapalooza Festival, originally conceived by cofounder Perry Farrell in 1991 as the farewell tour for his band, Jane’s Addiction. Farrell signed on some of his favorite bands for a six-week traveling festival, with a diverse musical lineup including Living…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
In Case You Missed It
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Oct. 7: One Year Later On the eve of this grim anniversary, what we can — and cannot — control
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Fast Forward Antisemitism hits record high in the U.S.; new report shows most-ever incidents in single year
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Culture He founded the Harlem Globetrotters and is the shortest man in the basketball hall of fame. A new book tells his story.
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Oct. 7: One Year Later One year after Oct. 7, a Yom Kippur ritual of communal mourning takes on fresh meaning
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