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
-
The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
-
This May Be the Last Chance To Tell The Story of These Survivors
Ari Rath met me at the door of his friend Saleh Turujman’s apartment. It was a brilliantly sunny Friday morning in Washington, D.C., but the men were tucked up inside this eighth-floor space with views overlooking the Jefferson Memorial. Images and artifacts of Jerusalem were on every flat surface, every wall, every shelf. Rath is…
-
Why ‘Ben-Hur’ Is More Than Just Another Jesus Flick
It’s hard to make a new movie about Jesus. True, the Gospels are full of intrigue, betrayal and violence, rich material for cinematic adaptation. But film versions of the New Testament are plentiful. Between the products aimed straight at the Sunday School crowd, and the torture porn of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,”…
The Latest
-
In Levy’s Universe, Women Grapple With Their Inner Selves
One of the unexpected pleasures of recent years has been the second coming of the South African-born British novelist and playwright Deborah Levy, born in 1959. When her agents distributed “Swimming Home” — a psychological novel set in the French Riviera with engaged, intelligent women at its heart — for consideration at the end of…
-
The Versailles of Asbury Park
On the mantelpiece of the Jersey Shore summer home of my dear longtime friends, Phyllis and Stanley Getzler, sits a small stone sculpture, its rough surface punctuated by streaks of black, white and a mustardy shade of yellow. When I first laid eyes on it, I assumed it was a contemporary artwork, one of many…
-
Arthur Hiller Directed ‘Love Story’ and ‘The In-Laws’ and Never Lost His Yiddishkeit
Best remembered for his hit film “Love Story,” (1970), the Canadian Jewish director Arthur Hiller’s highest achievement may have been remaining a mensch during the vertiginous ups and downs of a long Hollywood career. Hiller, who died on August 17 at age 92, attributed his trademark gentle calm to his parents, Rose Garfin and Harry…
-
Books Amy Schumer Gets Trolled By Redditors, Sells Thousands of Books Anyway
A small army of Redditors has been steadily trying to destroy the Amazon ratings of Amy Schumer’s new book of essays, “The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo”, reported TheWeek.com. Devotees of “Opie and Anthony,” a now-defunct radio show known for its racist host (who was also arrested for allegedly strangling a woman), plotted to…
-
Books 9 Books Bret Stephens Should Read Before Saying Arabs Have a ‘Stunted Literary Culture’
Writing this week in The Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens had some strange things to say about Arab-majority countries. From an Egyptian’s refusal to shake hands with an Israeli after their Olympics judo match, the one-time editor of The Jerusalem Post extrapolates all of recent politics and history across 22 countries. He makes reference…
-
NYC Fringe Play Tells Stories of Biblical Women — But Where Are the Jews?
“The Bible Women’s Project,” playing in Manhattan through August 24th as part of NYC Fringe, is a brave piece of theater. Coming from Eastern Nazarene College, a non-denominational Christian liberal arts college outside of Boston, the production grew out of a simple but daunting task: have a group of women read all the stories of…
-
My Life Among The Trolls
In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a pretty vicious country these days, and by that, I don’t mean the obvious instances of intolerance-cum-violence against African Americans or Muslims or the LGBT community. I mean the everyday little nettles and barbs with which nearly all of us are inundated. Meanness in America is a…
-
Remembering Fyvush Finkel — a Character Actor of Uncommon Character
The Forward played an integral role in the start of the long and glorious performing career of the multitalented Fyvush Finkel, who died on August 14 at age 93. He was born Philip Finkel in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to a mother from Minsk and a father from Warsaw. Around 1931, when Philip was…
-
In Israel, Internet Comments are Really Vicious — and Powerful
In the United States, “don’t read the comments” is such a common refrain that it’s become shorthand for a generation’s anxiety over abusive internet behavior. In Israel, the comments sections below news article are no less abusive, but people do read them, which is why they play a prominent role in Israeli public discourse. Israelis…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
News ‘He was a mensch’: Slain Messianic Jew remembered as bridge-builder
- 3
Culture Ye’s antisemitism is old news, but it’s time to pay attention again
- 4
Opinion How anti-Israel rhetoric led to the killing of 2 in Washington, DC
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion After the DC shooting it’s clear: The pro-Palestine movement must be purged of violent extremism
-
Opinion I want Palestinians to be free. But hearing the Capital Jewish Museum shooter’s chant terrifies me
-
Fast Forward Trump administration says Columbia University ‘continually failed to protect Jewish students’
-
Art Ben Shahn was a radical artist — why didn’t he want to be called a Jewish one?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
