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
-
Comedy Central Host Keeps His Act Strictly ‘Kasher’
Despite a hectic and dramatic life story, 37-year-old comedian Moshe Kasher has emerged relatively unscathed; he is a regular guest on late night talk shows, and the author of a memoir (“Kasher in the Rye”). He now hosts a new Comedy Central TV series, “Problematic With Moshe Kasher,” which aims “to solve every problem that…
-
‘Oslo’ Wins Top Outer Critics Circle Honors
J.T. Rogers’s “Oslo,” a gripping account of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that powered the Oslo Accords, has won the 2017 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Play. The Awards, announced this morning, also honored Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s “Hello, Dolly!” as Outstanding Revival of a Musical, Steven Levenson’s “If I Forget” as Outstanding New…
-
How Graphic Designer Saul Bass Drew Us Into The Movies
Graphic designer Saul Bass is one of those towering figures in American film whose name is far less well-known than his work. His work appears in the films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick. If you’ve seen “Catch Me If You Can” (2002), “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005), “Mad…
The Latest
-
For Arvo Pärt, Music And Silence Are Divine
In her essay, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” Susan Sontag writes that “the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence.” Though Sontag never mentions the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (of whom she could hardly have been aware at the time),…
-
How Did John Steinbeck And An Obama Staffer Get The Bible So Wrong?
Working for Barack Obama can be a career maker, but Hebrew readers have been puzzled by the explanation for the path that one former staffer took. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Michael Slaby, whom the newspaper described as “among the key tech gurus for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns,” has founded a startup called Timshel…
-
Books Is There Still A Chance For Peace In The Middle East?
Not long ago, I strolled along the spotless streets of Rawabi, a new Palestinian city being built near Ramallah, with Jack Nassar, the project’s development manager. He is an educated young man, smartly dressed and well compensated. We walked past the impressive amphitheater, strolled through expansive parks, saw the church and the mosque, and viewed…
-
How My Daughter’s Bat Mitzvah Almost Didn’t Happen
Our daughter stood on the bimah facing the congregation, cradling a Torah nearly half her size. She chanted the Shema, loud and strong, filling the airy synagogue. Her song stirred reflections on assimilation and annihilation, the twin threats to Judaism of the long 20th century, and on the narrow and winding path my family traveled…
-
25 Years Later, ‘Angels In America’ Returns To London
Tony Kushner’s generation-defining two-part play “Angels in America” premiered in San Francisco in 1991, but to many, its first definitive production was at London’s National Theatre in 1992. The year-long run of “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” — soon to be followed by part 2, “Angels in America: Perestroika” — cemented the play’s Broadway prospects,…
-
More Than 120 Years Later, ‘Dreyfus Affair’ Still Resonates
The infamous story of the 1894 conspiracy against French Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason is being dramatized at Brooklyn’s BAM Fisher in a multi-media production, “The Dreyfus Affair,” based on texts and music from that period. The performance by The Ensemble for the Romantic Century (ERC) includes excerpts from the politically charged opera “La…
-
When Smart Rabbis Make Dumb Videos We Must Demand Better
Recently, there’s been a trend to act as if the rising anti-Semitism across the Western world sprang from nothing. Not that there are no reasons behind the rise, but simply that before the resurgence of far right movements, anti-Semitism was simply not around in any meaningful capacity. We know this, of course, to be false….
-
Books 7 Books Every Jewish Feminist Should Read
It’s no secret that the second wave of the Feminist movement was propelled forward partially by Jewish women. Decades after some of the books written by these women were published, they continue to inspire women of all faiths and cultures to step and fight for the cause. Below, in no particular order, are 7 books…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Inside the ancient Christian theology driving modern antisemitism
- 2
News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
- 3
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
- 4
News Mamdani to attend Passover Seder as he navigates ties with Jewish groups amid rising antisemitism
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
-
Culture Gene Shalit, a mensch with a personality as big as his mustache, turns 100
-
Looking Forward How a song about the food chain became a Seder mainstay
-
Fast Forward Connecticut Catholic school punishes students who targeted ‘Jew Canaan’ rivals on social media
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
