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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Jewish Architect Richard Neutra’s Home Named as One of 24 New National Historic Landmarks
Last week, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced 24 new National Historic Landmarks. The newly designated sites, which include landmarks ranging from a 12th-century village site in Iowa to the site of the Kent State Massacre, “depict different threads of the American story that have been told through activism, architecture, music and religious observance,”…
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In France, a Vexing Dilemma: Collaborate or Resist?
Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died under Nazi Occupation By Anne Sebba St. Martin’s Press, 457 pages, $27.99 The perspective of time and new primary sources are chipping away at myths about resistance and collaboration under Nazi rule. Last year, for instance, the French response to defeat and occupation was…
The Latest
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On The Eve Of Trump’s Inauguration, This Exhibition Of Protest Photography Is As Fresh As Ever
How exactly should one photograph a political demonstration? There are a few schools of thought, I imagine, and it may be helpful to think of these approaches in similar terms to those used to discuss the various approaches to literary translation – both translators and photographers work across languages in order to best make a work…
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A Second Coming for Jesus — at the Israel Museum
‘It turns out that all Israeli art is about Jesus,” an American tourist said to me as he moved away from a painting in The Israel Museum’s paradigm-shifting new exhibit titled “Behold the Man: Jesus in Israeli Art.” In Hebrew, the title is a bit different: Zeh Ha’Ish, or “This Is the Man.” Throughout the…
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Was Some Nazi Art Actually Pretty Good?
If you find yourself in Munich between now and March, then William Cook of The Spectator.” The exhibition, if you hadn’t guessed from the time frame, focuses on modernism, showing work by the likes of Gerhard Richter and Karel Appel. To hear Cook tell it, the exhibition is interesting, but relatively safe. Artist like Appel…
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Will ‘Candide’ Help NYC Opera’s ‘Garden Grow?’
Candide might have been an idiot. But the New York City Opera was no fool to stage the operetta, which closed on Sunday after a two-week run. Voltaire’s novella is well suited to light opera, a madcap satire on 18th century Europe. And the work of composer Leonard Bernstein, librettist Hugh Wheeler, producer Harold Prince…
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The Holocaust Memoir I Didn’t Help Write — And Wish I Had
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Nolan Gurfinkiel belonged to the dwindling tribe of Holocaust survivors who used to eat at my parents’ Shabbos table. He was a Schindler Jew, one of about 1,200 Krakow Jews who survived through the good offices of Oskar Schindler, Europe’s most famous Righteous Gentile. Nolan wore dark…
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Bernard-Henri Lévy and the Fight Against Isis
One of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s earliest works, 1979’s “The Testament of God,” argued that Jewish tradition holds an answer to the challenges of what he had earlier termed “barbarism with a human face.” “The Testament of God” was one of the books that propelled Lévy to become one of France’s leading public intellectuals. Now, thirty-five years…
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Richard Spencer’s Master’s Thesis Was an Anti-Semitic Critique — of a Jewish Philosopher
There’s lots to be puzzled by when it comes Richard Spencer, popularizer of the term “alt-right,” the label preferred by contemporary white supremacists. Given that white Europeans colonized America (brutally, we might add), how does he justify thinking the country fundamentally belongs to them? As certain press outlets — in moves of misjudgment that seem…
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What I’m Going To Say in My 2020 Inauguration Speech
People my age may be too old to write an episode of “Veep,” but we can be President of the United States. Being leader of the free world is obviously less demanding than turning out a sitcom. So in 2020, instead of making calls, canvassing, signing petitions and posting them on Facebook, I’m going to…
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Meet The Jewish Photographers Who Helped Shape The Image Of The Civil Rights Movement
In 1965, Martin Luther King told photographer James “Spider” Martin, “we could have marched, we could have protested forever, but if it weren’t for guys like you, it would have been for nothing. The whole world saw your pictures. That’s why the Voting Rights Act passed.” This is, of course, a case of overstated humility,…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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