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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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Mordecai Richler Gets a Mural in Montreal — And His Son Approves
Mordecai Richler has always been a larger-than-life presence in Montreal. Now, that’s literally the case. The City of Montreal has unveiled an official mural dedicated to the late author, who captured the city’s singular Jewish character — and skewered its often surreal language politics — in potent essays and canonical novels like “The Apprenticeship of…
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10 Overlooked Jewish Films That You Can Stream For Free Right Now
The Internet is filled with oddities and lost gems. We took a dive into YouTube and found that some of the most interesting Jewish films are out there. And you can watch them right now. 1) The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz Ted Kotcheff’s 1974 screen adaptation of Mordechai Richler’s classic coming-of-age novel starred a young…
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Why Isn’t Frederick Kiesler a Household Name?
A paradox lies at the core of Frederick Kiesler’s legacy. Over a career that spanned half a century, the protean and tireless architect, designer and theoretician actually built precious little. His most famous and, arguably, most radical design, the free-form pod-like “Endless House,” never yielded a satisfactory prototype, despite nearly 40 years of planning; few…
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The Jewish Museum in a Town With Only One Jew In It
From Berlin to Moscow; London to Vienna; Copenhagen, Denmark, to Budapest, Hungary, and, recently, Warsaw, Poland, the map of Europe is dotted with museums dedicated to the history and culture of Jewish communities past and present. Although the Jewish Museum in Prague dates back to 1906, the majority of Jewish museums now on a Jewish…
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Happy 100th Birthday to Roald Dahl — Beloved Author and Vile Anti-Semite
Born on September 13, 1916, Roald Dahl, the beloved author of “Matilda” and “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” would have turned 100 today. It’s an anniversary we mark with admiration and a bit of uncertainty as well. For, aside from his brilliant imaginaton and wicked sense of humor, Dahl was also something of an…
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Why Dead Languages Like Akkadian Still Matter
I grew up hearing the Code of Hammurabi read out loud, in Akkadian, at the dining-room table. I did not know that my graduate-student mother was one of Akkadian’s few regular readers. The language of the ancient Akkad region, or modern-day Iraq, is considered a “dead language,” just like Ugaritic and Phoenician. All these dead…
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How in the World Did Cuneiform Cookies Become a Thing?
Cuneiform cookies? Yes, they are a thing. Though it has been centuries since Akkadian was spoken, cuneiform writing has had an unexpected burst of popularity as a cookie decoration. The idea started with Katy Blanchard, the Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper of the Near Eastern Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in…
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How To Say Kaddish For Your Father in 7 Different Cities
Just over a month ago, my dearly beloved father, Dr. Stephen S. Kutner z”l, passed away, right before my family and I had planned to take a complicated three-week East Coast road trip. After sitting shiva we decided to go through with the trip. And as a Jew mourning an immediate family member, that meant…
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Keeping Up With the Cohens
People collect, display and hang on to stuff for all sorts of reasons. Either they relish the thrill of acquisition, enjoy the company of their things or see them as a hedge against invisibility. What people collect is equally as varied as their motivations. Some lovingly assemble a collection of rocks, others pile up photographs…
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On 15th Anniversary Of 9/11, Sculptor Shows City In Mourning
'I think when anyone ever grieves or thinks they think in their own vocabulary'
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Masha Gessen Journeys to a Jewish Land Without Jews
For a couple of weeks several years ago, my Facebook wall filled up with photos from friends participating in the First International Summer Yiddish Program in Birobidzhan, the capital city of the Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia’s Far East. These were delightful group pictures taken next to the main points of interest for visiting Yiddishists…
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Opinion Mike Huckabee’s stunning, terrifying new gift to the Israeli right
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Opinion Trump is forcing liberal Zionists to confront an extraordinarily inconvenient truth
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Fast Forward Trump is keeping the world guessing about his Iran intentions. Could his first term offer clues?
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