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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Did An Israeli Tech Company Accuse Trump Of Plagiarism?
In the (entirely justified) rush to criticize Donald Trump, people are turning towards some outlandish stories in order to sate their (justified) rage. First, there were the crop of false hate crime allegations just post election (we covered one of the false allegations in this article” regarding Trump and Russia. We can also add to…
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EXCLUSIVE: Paul Newman’s Lost Movie Returns — 55 Years Later
Paul Newman’s long-lost film “On The Harmfulness Of Tobacco,” will be shown for the first time in 55 years on February 20. The subject of an extensive and exclusive story in the Forward last November, it will screen at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of its “Newman Directs” program. The Lincoln Center…
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Constitutional Scholar Suing Trump Thinks The Case Could Make History
After Erwin Chemerinsky agreed to an interview with me, I sent a benignly gloating text to a friend who, in high school, had been my teammate in an intensive constitutional law competition. “Are you f****** kidding me right now,” he responded. Chemerinsky is something of an icon in the field of Constitutional law. Now, making…
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Have They Finally Found ‘Bugsy’ Siegel’s Killer?
We all know that famous scene in “The Godfather,” the one where the camera cuts back and forth between Michael Corleone attending a baptism and the slaughter of the Corleone family’s enemies. One of the most iconic shots (no pun intended) during the sequence is the scene in which Moe Greene, the Jewish gangster in…
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Berlinale Premieres Its First Yiddish Film and Revisits an Israeli Classic
A meditative documentary about Samuel Bickels, a polyglot costume drama about Karl Marx and a star-studded André Aciman adaptation are among the films to watch for at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, which kicked off on Thursday with the warmly received “Django,” a biopic about the legendary Gypsy Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. When the…
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Why the Muslim Ban Sent Jewish Writers Flocking to Social Media
On Friday, January 27, one week after he was sworn in as president, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.” That order — as you’ve now surely heard — did at least two notable things. First, it suspended the “Issuance of Visas and Other…
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On Mardi Gras, Are Jews Still Outsiders in New Orleans?
The Rex parade entered the city at the port, the procession stepping from a lavishly decorated boat that drifted down the Mississippi and docked at the foot of Canal Street. It was afternoon on Mardi Gras Day, 1872. Historian Ned Sublette describes the scene in his history of the city, “The Year Before the Flood:…
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How My Illegal Abortion Affirms My Belief in the Right To Choose
I was 18 and in love. The diaphragm a Planned Parenthood clinic had taught me to use had failed. Or I had failed, in my clumsiness, to insert it properly. I was pregnant. I was in California finishing up my degree at UC Berkeley, trying to concentrate on papers and exams, but I also knew…
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The Tragic Story Of Anne Frank’s Brilliant Cousin
Had she known her cousin, Anne Frank might have rephrased a famous statement to read: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really chic at heart.” The French Jewish interior designer Jean-Michel Frank, despite a life of almost unrelieved tragedy — he committed suicide in 1941 at the age of 46 —…
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How The Crumbs Have Kept Their 46-Year Love Affair Alive
‘He’s the straight man, I’m the pratfall,”Aline Kominsky-Crumb said by way of explaining the dynamics of the collaborative comics she has been making with her husband, Robert Crumb, for well over 40 years. Oh, but that much was clear from the start of my time with Kominsky-Crumb. Having ostensibly been told that I was to…
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Where Are All The Tu B’Shvat Songs?
Many Jewish holidays have inspired the people of the book to drop tomes and pick up instruments. And, in the age of YouTube, there’s plenty of evidence for the success of that substitution. And, since Tu B’Shvat — a kind of Jewish Arbor Day — celebrates the rebirth of the natural world, it should be…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
