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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I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
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Why Hank Greenberg Never Became a New York Yankee
Hall of Fame baseball player Hank Greenberg grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium yet never played for his hometown Yankees. Why not? The Yankees did in fact pursue the young prospect. Paul Krichell, the scout famous for discovering Lou Gehrig, recognized another raw talent in Greenberg and figured — as the New York…
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Family, Faith, Food and Other Keys to Becoming the World’s Oldest Man
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. One day shortly after the outbreak of World War I, when Yisrael Kristal was a child, word spread throughout his hometown of Zarnow, about fifty miles from Lodz, that Emperor Franz Joseph was visiting a nearby town. The boy, along with a group of Jews from his…
The Latest
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Books New Cookbook Is Chef’s Love Letter to Mediterranean Diet
Eighty is an age when many people would be resting on their laurels and hanging up their chef’s whites — especially someone like Joyce Goldstein, the former Chez Panisse Café chef who went on to run her own Mediterranean restaurant and has written numerous cookbooks. But when you open your first restaurant at 49, as…
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Susan Klebold Doesn’t Believe God Is Watching Over Her Family Anymore
In the days after Dylan Klebold along with Eric Harris shot and killed 12 students and one teacher and then himself at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, his mother, Sue Klebold, remembered a kind of “religious warfare” in the community of Littleton, Colorado. The notion that she hadn’t raised her son to be…
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Judaica For Sale at the Dachau Gift Shop
This past fall, my family was planning a trip to some of Northern Europe’s greatest cities — Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin and Munich. Dachau is just a one-hour drive northwest of Munich, which was to be our final city before returning stateside. And so we put the former concentration camp on our itinerary. Once in Munich,…
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At 90, Stanley Moss Reflects on a Life in Poetry
At 90, poet and editor Stanley Moss is as busy as ever. Following the publication of his latest collection, “It’s About Time,” he’s readying himself for a tour of Europe, editing manuscripts for Sheep Meadow Press, and of course, continuing to write. A sardonic visionary and voracious raconteur, Moss has had a substantial influence on…
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‘Oh Hello,’ Bernie Sanders, and the Rise of Old Jews Telling Truths
For one month this past winter, two cranky geriatric men and their small off-Broadway play challenged “Hamilton” as the most sought after ticket in New York. I was one of the lucky New Yorkers to see “Oh Hello, Live! on (Off) Broadway” during its sold out December run at the Cherry Lane Theater, and to…
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Exploring Yiddish Theater, From the Cheap Seats to Backstage
At the entrance to “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, there’s a wall-sized reproduction of a 1905 photo showing the 1700-seat Grand Theatre, the first venue built expressly for Yiddish productions. A well-dressed crowd in starched collars and derby hats mills…
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Why Garry Shandling Was One of the Greatest Jewish Comedians Ever
Garry Shandling was the master of turning Jewish dissatisfaction into comedy. People love to talk about neurosis like it’s the defining trope all Jewish comedians share, but Shandling wore a look on his face like he was uncomfortable with nearly everything, like nothing was ever right. That’s what made him one of the greatest comedians…
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Remembering the Inspirational Legacy of Aharon Megged
The Israeli writer Aharon Megged, who died on March 23 at age 95, was paradoxically multifaceted. His parents made Aliyah from their native Poland in 1926, changing the family name from Greenberg. Megged was part of a generation of pioneers who were ostensibly critical of the Diaspora, yet nourished culturally by European roots. As his…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago I’m writing these lines at the bazaar. Around me is a sea of loud voices. Music is playing, and conversation rings out on all sides. Light is streaming into the giant hall. It’s not just a hall — it’s more like a big field. And in this field, human hands have…
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