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
-
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.
-
Punk’s Jewish Godfather Alan Vega Dies at 78
Punk pioneer Alan Vega of Suicide – whose pitch-black, electro-charged minimalism influenced musicians from Bruce Springsteen to U2 to The Arcade Fire – died this weekend at age 78. Born in 1938 as Boruch Alan Bormowitz in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Vega studied fine arts and physics at Brooklyn College. A chance meeting decades later with performer…
-
Uri Geller and the Case of the Anti-Semitic Pokemon
Israeli impresario Uri Geller has claimed that extraterrestrials gave him the power to bend spoons with his mind. He also runs a humanitarian organization called International Friends of Magen David Adom (Red Star Of David). Sometime around 2000, kids started approaching Geller and asking him to autograph certain Pokemon cards. Apparently, there was a widespread…
The Latest
-
Why a Good, Close Shave Is Like a False Messiah
It was either a cheap two-blade Bic or a generic Gillette knock-off razor. Given the almost pathological thriftiness my family had, I assume it was probably the cheaper option, whichever it was. I recall that when I saw the wall of razors at the drug store offering multiple blades and clean shaves, I realized that…
-
For Survivor’s Grandson, Holocaust Still Reverberates in ‘East-West Street’
East-West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” By Philippe Sands Knopf, $32.50 448 pages At the beginning of Philippe Sands’s tour de force “East West Street: On the Origins of ‘Genocide’ and ‘Crimes Against Humanity,’” Sands offers a quote from the French psychoanalyst Nicolas Abraham. “What haunts are not the dead,…
-
Never-Before-Seen Diane Arbus Photos on View at the Met
The new Diane Arbus show, which opened on July 12 at the Met Breuer, feels disorienting, even dizzying, at first, but not because of the content of the photographs or the overwhelming number of them (over 100). The second floor has been set up with rows of skinny, floor-to-ceiling panels in a diagonal arrangement, which…
-
Could SymPop Be the Future of Jewish Artistic Collaboration?
Most of us experience art and culture at a distance. We dutifully take in an exhibition, attend a concert or a play and watch a movie, but in each instance we encounter a finished product: a framed painting or photograph, a polished performance, 90 minutes of screen time. Opportunities for engaging with the artistic process…
-
Poetry As A Service? Lyricists Pen Verses to Public On Street
Armed with their typewriters and the whims of passersby as inspiration, a number of writers are seeking to bring the craft of poetry to the masses — by writing poems on request for people on the street. Bill Keys can often be found in the depths of Washington Square Park or Central Park, where he…
-
A 3-Hour Play About the Oslo Accords Is Surprisingly Entertaining
According to a famous study conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron two decades ago, all it takes to fall in love with someone is to stare at the person for four minutes and ask a series of 36 personal questions. “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers,” Aron and his…
-
The Emails of Natalie Portman, Jonathan Safran Foer — and Neal Pollack
“When The Times suggested this piece, and it became clear we weren’t going to be in the same place for long enough to allow for a traditional profile… I was happy to think of the lost correspondence being somehow replenished with, or redeemed by, a new exchange.” (email from Jonathan Safran Foer to Natalie Portman,…
-
Woody Allen Yearns For a More Glamorous Time — Again
There was a time when Woody Allen set the tone for the culture. In movies like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Stardust Memories” and “Zelig” he represented and satirized East Coast intellectuals, appealing to a generation of college-educated baby boomers through a mix of self-deprecatory and highbrow humor. With cameo appearances by Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow,…
-
Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago Chinese v. Yiddish If you really want to understand the psychology of the people who live in New York City’s different ethnic quarters, it’s worthwhile to take a trip to one of the neighborhood’s magistrate courts, which deals with the resolution of local disputes and petty crimes. In Essex Market Court,…
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
- 2
Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
- 3
Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
- 4
Fast Forward Meet Lev Kreitman, who brought down Tel Aviv shooter and survived Nova music festival on Oct. 7
In Case You Missed It
-
Oct. 7: One Year Later On the eve of this grim anniversary, what we can — and cannot — control
-
Fast Forward Antisemitism hits record high in the U.S.; new report shows most-ever incidents in single year
-
Culture He founded the Harlem Globetrotters and is the shortest man in the basketball hall of fame. A new book tells his story.
-
Oct. 7: One Year Later One year after Oct. 7, a Yom Kippur ritual of communal mourning takes on fresh meaning
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism