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
-
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
-
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…
The Latest
-
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…
-
Why We Must Transform Ourselves in the Month of Av
Some months ago, during an interview with a reporter, I remarked matter-of-factly, regarding my marriage of nearly 15 years, “ “I was a shitty husband.” The reporter looked alarmed, as if I’d confessed to hiding corpses in my basement. “Why do you say that?” she asked. I hadn’t meant to be so self-denigrating; I meant…
-
America’s Cosmetic Titans Go Head-To-Head In ‘War Paint’
For decades, the two great 20th-century titans of cosmetics, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, feuded, competing for beauty hegemony and celebrity, expressing mutual disdain, and purloining each other’s ideas and employees. At one point, Rubinstein even hired Arden’s ex-husband Tommy Lewis, both a charming philanderer and a gifted salesman. But what if, for all their…
-
Kafka’s Papers Emerge From The Trial
(JTA) — Papers belonging to writer Franz Kafka will be transferred to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled. The papers are part of the estate of writer Max Brod, a friend and biographer of Kafka. Brod brought the papers with him to Palestine in 1939 when he fled Prague to…
-
Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago Socialists Need Not Apply Socialists are treyf for the New York City Board of Education, but bribes are apparently kosher. We know this because a local schoolteacher named Gabriel Simon, a well-known socialist active on the Lower East Side, recently took the exam to become a principal and scored the highest…
-
Harvey Singer Caught His Prostate Cancer Early. Here’s How.
When the Forward first wrote about Harvey Singer two years ago, he shared his trials of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008. The Rochester, New York, resident opted for a full mastectomy, only to be diagnosed with prostate cancer 18 months later. Recently, we learned that Singer faced yet another monumental health scare after…
-
Watch Out Men, Breast Cancer Gene Can Get You Too
Cancer kept Angel Moses busy. Before even completing the five-year treatment for breast cancer after she was diagnosed in 2003, the disease recurred in the original breast and a new cancer developed in the other. The Chicago resident first found she had the disease when she was just 38. Her age and the occurrence of…
-
Can Israeli Startup Use Gene Therapy To Cure Cancer?
In 1944 Harvard installed Mark I, a computerized calculator, to aid physics professor John von Neumann’s work on the Manhattan Project. The one-of-a-kind machine took up most of a room. Today, for $500, you can keep an exponentially more rapid and versatile smartphone in your pocket. Imagine what similarly rapid technological growth might look like…
-
How Poet Marianne Moore Was Inspired By the Jews
American modernist poets, including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, were notorious for differing degrees of anti-Semitism, but their colleague Marianne Moore (1887–1972) was uniquely inspired by Jewish tradition and lore. Linda Leavell edited a recently published edition of Marianne Moore’s landmark first poetry collection, “Observations” (1924). She has also published…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture I ranked the NYC mayoral candidates exclusively based on their bagel orders
- 2
News How Jewish can you be in a Boca country club? Wrapping tefillin got a family suspended, lawsuit says
- 3
Opinion Mike Huckabee’s stunning, terrifying new gift to the Israeli right
- 4
Opinion Greta Thunberg’s Gaza flotilla was never going to help Palestinians
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward At an Iranian Jewish hangout, retirees wonder if regime change is in the cards
-
Fast Forward For Israelis under Iranian barrage, deadly nights alternate with days brimming with life
-
Fast Forward Their counselors stuck in Israel, US Jewish camps are putting out ‘Help Wanted’ signs
-
Culture What was Albert Einstein thinking as he gazed down on Trump’s military parade?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
