This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
-
80 Years Ago, Jewish London Fought Off the Fascists on Cable Street
“They had a bloody cheek to come and demonstrate in a Jewish area, don’t you think so?” declares Hannah Grant. The 95-year-old great-grandmother is reminiscing about a moment in British Jewish history that took place exactly 80 years ago. But the outrage in her voice is undimmed by the decades. “The chutzpah of it —…
-
The Unlikely Story of Nachman Libeskind’s Survival
In the Unlikeliest of Places: How Nachman Libeskind Survived the Nazis, Gulags and Soviet Communism By Annette Libeskind Berkovits, foreword by Daniel Libeskind Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 296 pages, $34.99 The name Libeskind most likely conjures Daniel Libeskind, architect of the Jewish Museum Berlin and master planner of the World Trade Center site. “In the…
-
The 14 New Books You Should Be Reading This Fall
Cooler mornings; stray, amber-tinged leaves drifting romantically toward the sidewalk; a host of newspaper cartoons mocking an imminent flood of pumpkin-spiced baked goods and beverages — it must be fall! Call us biased, but we’ve always felt that the best way to celebrate autumn’s coziness is to curl up with a good book. Luckily, some…
The Latest
-
This Stunning Australian Story Rivals Philip Roth
The Golden Age By Joan London Europa Editions, 256 pages, $17 Where has Joan London been all my life? In Perth, Australia, apparently, at the outer edge of the earth, and completely off my radar. Which is a shame, because her third novel, “The Golden Age” — which takes its name from a pub-turned-convalescent home…
-
Will Broadway Water Down Ben Hecht’s Venomous ‘Front Page’?
A Broadway revival of the joyously raucous, racy comedy “The Front Page”, about 1920s Chicago newspaper world high jinks, began previews September 20. Written by the American Jewish screenwriter and novelist Ben Hecht (1894–1964) and Charles MacArthur, both former Chicago crime reporters, the play’s gallows humor mocks Jews, African Americans, gay men and lesbians, and…
-
A Year After His Death, Theodore Bikel Continues To Defy Typecasting
It’s been just a little over a year since Theodore Bikel died — he passed away a year ago July at age 91 — and as such, his legacy has yet to be cemented. This is undoubtedly due in part to the difficulty of encapsulating the legacy of a veritable Zelig – an Austrian-born Zionist…
-
What Elie Wiesel Taught Me About Being a Writer
It was only a few weeks into my first semester of graduate school that things began to go awry. The M.A. Creative Writing workshop that autumn was led by a writer I admired; my fellow students were savvy and talented, energetic in their critiques of each other’s manuscripts. I’d just returned from a stint working…
-
Is New York Times Critic Comparing Trump to Hitler?
Sometimes, when New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani is channeling the voice of Holden Caulfield or over-using the word limn, she can be a tad grating. Other times, though, she still has the capacity to knock one out of the park. That’s the case today with Kakutani’s already-gone-viral review of “Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939,” which uses…
-
Is a Jewish Accent Still a Thing — And If So, What Is It?
Over at Atlas Obscura, writer Dan Nosowitz poses a question that all of us have probably thought about at one time or another — Is there such a thing as a Jewish accent? And if so, what is it? And if we can define what it is, is it still a thing? Nosowitz’s answer to…
-
Why Westworld Is a 21st Century Golem Story
Adam, the first man, was, like Shakespeare’s MacDuff, not of woman born. But neither was he, from his mother’s womb, untimely ripped. He was created from dust, making him (according to the Talmud) the first golem. Probably not true, but significant. An origin story. Many golem stories followed. In the most famous ones, the golem…
-
Rachel Weisz Has a Thing or Two To Say About ‘Denial’
The British actress Rachel Weisz plays historian Deborah Lipstadt in the new film “Denial.” The film resonates with the actress’s own life: Weisz’s father is Jewish; her mother became a Jew, and both fled the Nazis. Weisz met with the Forward’s Jane Eisner recently to talk about the film, her visit to Auschwitz and what…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Exclusive Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you
- 2
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
- 3
Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
- 4
Opinion Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Mahmoud Khalil misunderstands why so many Jews are scared of anti-Zionism
-
Opinion Mahmoud Khalil’s reassurances are bad for Jews but even worse for Palestinians
-
Film & TV Jonah Hill’s cancel culture dramedy makes an antisemitism exception — all about Kanye
-
Fast Forward 60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Israel, up sharply since 2022, survey shows
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
