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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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
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‘Orange is the New Black’ Star Alan Aisenberg Teases Upcoming Season
Alan Aisenberg won’t really say what’s going to happen to his character, Officer Bayley, on the upcoming season of “Orange is the New Black,” but from the way he winkingly edges around the topic — it’s going to be good. “Shit gets very real for Bayley,” he said, followed by a cryptic “This is a…
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This Might Be Your Last Chance To See This Mural
The Heritage Mural, which adorns the eastern facade of 232 East Broadway on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, has already begun to disintegrate. Portions of the muted clay-colored and yellow paint have weathered away, leaving sections of the picture lost to memory now. Soon the building will be razed for new development, and then the mural…
The Latest
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Books Yiddish Food on Front Burner in ‘Rhapsody in Schmaltz’
For Canadian author Michael Wex, the process of researching Yiddish cuisine was almost as distasteful as a glass of a p’tcha (calves foot jelly) on an empty stomach. Everyone who discovered that he was writing about Jewish food seemed to have a comment, complaint or bagel store to boycott. Friends and acquaintances alike insisted their…
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What Jews Can Learn From ‘Hamilton’
Everything you’ve heard about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” is true. The musical, which has won 11 Tony Awards, is not merely wonderful. It’s pure genius. The music, acting, dancing, stage direction, and libretto are all simply stunning. Even for a reviewer not especially inclined toward rap — the rhythmically chanted performance style that comprises Miranda’s coin…
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How ‘Hamilton’ Turned Me Into a Broadway Believer
All pilgrims can recount the story of their journeys to the holy land. For the guy standing behind us in line with his daughter, that story began on a plane in Phoenix, and culminated in their arrival on West 46th Street where they had beaten the bots and won the lottery for $10 front row…
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Lynne Avadenka’s Triumph of the Imagination
These days, we can’t seem to escape bombast or bloat. It’s all about us: on the news, in social media, at the movies and especially in the universe of museums, where the notion that bigger is better has taken hold of the curatorial imagination and won’t let go. Finding exhibitions that practice – and reward…
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In the Ghettos of Poland, Few Heroes and Many Witnesses
In Those Nightmarish Days: The Ghetto Reportage of Peretz Opoczynski and Josef Zelkowicz Edited and with an introduction by Samuel D. Kassow; translated and co-edited by David Suchoff Yale University Press (New Yiddish Library), 309 pages, $35 The people perished, but the writings survived. Several of the East European Jewish ghettos forced into existence and…
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Muhammad Ali and Jewish Doctor’s Friendship Started With Fight to End Parkinson’s
Abraham Lieberman had been Muhammad Ali’s doctor for a decade when in 1994 he came up with the idea of creating an institute for Parkinson’s, the disease he diagnosed Ali with in 1984, and implored the three-time world champion boxer for help. Lieberman called Ali to ask if he would lend his name to the…
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In a Horror Film, Tikkun Shows Its Dark Side
In Kabbalah, the word tikkun — roughly translated as “rectification” or “repair” — describes a process in which human beings can lift the world up through the performance of the Torah’s commandments. Although it seems intuitive, tikkun is a radical concept. It grants humanity the agency to overcome evil and transform it into good and,…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago Everything has its time, and we can say here and now that the time has come for wearing beards, even in treyf America. When future historians write the history of Jewish facial hair in America, they will have to look at our time and call it “the bearded period in America.”…
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‘Amadeus’ Playwright Peter Shaffer Was a Verbose Virtuoso
It was there on the dining room table, in my childhood home, the VHS of “Amadeus.” “The man,” the tag line began, followed by a tantalizing ellipses, “…the music…the madness…the murder…the motion picture.” Never before had the case of a film been so alluring, those taunting words presided over by a menacing figure in an…
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