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
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Film & TV
This Movie Masterpiece Will Make You Rethink the Ten Commandments
In the spring of 1998, it seemed as if the meandering, directionless years of my life were over, and I was about to arrive in the promised land. I had been accepted to film school. USC sent me a list of films that I was to watch before classes started in the fall. Many were…
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5 Jewish Things About Skittles That Donald Trump Jr. May Not Know
In one of the uglier moments of the current political season, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out an image comparing Syrian refugees to a handful of poisoned Skittles. Condemnation has been pretty much universal on this one. So, we thought we’d take a moment to reclaim the innocence of Skittles and delve into some of the…
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How Filmmakers Are Using Videotherapy To Help the Bereaved in Israel
In the Israeli short “Where To?” a middle-aged man, Ofir Shaer, and his pals are looking forward to a major ball game. But it’s not just any ball game — this one is a memorial to his late son. It soon becomes clear that Shaer is so focused on his dead child that he has…
The Latest
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How The Sharps Defied the Nazis and Became American Heroes
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War By Artemis Joukowsky III, foreword by Ken Burns Beacon Press, 272 pages, $25.95 Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War A film by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky Premiering 9 p.m., September 20, on PBS In some respects, Waitstill and Martha Sharp resembled other Holocaust rescuers: They were motivated by…
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The Secret Jewish History of Cat Stevens
When I went off to sleep-away camp in 1972 for the first time, the soundtrack of the summer — especially for those like me, who arrived with guitar in hand — was all Cat Stevens, all the time. By 1972, Stevens had already achieved his greatest success with a stunning trio of albums released in…
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Riveting HBO Documentary Revisits Charlie Hebdo Terror Attacks
The cashier tried to stop him. You can’t come in now, she said. But he brushed past her, explaining he just needed bread for Shabbat. Moments later he was dead. All this was recorded on security footage at a kosher supermarket in Paris, a reminder — if one were needed — of the frailty of…
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Why I Remain Connected to the Family of Jews
Some years ago, a close relative — I’ll call him “Cousin Yankel” — got himself into trouble and landed in the local paper. Yankel was a Hasid who’d spent his entire life in sheltered environs, and one day, soon after he got his driver’s license, he made an illegal turn and was pulled over by…
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Why Jewish Critics Were Afraid of Edward Albee
The playwright Edward Albee, who died on September 16 at age 88, is acclaimed today as the author of “The Zoo Story” (1958), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1962), and “A Delicate Balance” (1966). Yet decades ago, he was slated by a number of American Jewish writers, before ultimately being inspired by friendship with a…
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How Av Isaacs Shaped Toronto’s Art Scene
Steve Martin, the actor, has curated a blockbuster Canadiana show on one floor, and a dazzling installation by Chicago art star Theaster Gates occupies another. But the most unusual exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario may be its tribute to Avrom Isaacovitch. Born in Winnipeg to Polish immigrants, Isaacovitch moved to Toronto in 1941,…
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Books A Memoir of Treyf Truthtelling
“There’s always more to all of us,” Elissa Altman explained to me over the phone when talking about the impetus for her second memoir, “Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw,” which is out next week. Altman — a cookbook editor, food writer and James Beard Foundation award-winning author of the blog Poor Man’s Feast…
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400-Year-Old Torah Discovered in Portugal
My 1996 novel “The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon,” begins with the discovery of medieval Portuguese-Jewish manuscripts in the basement of a house being refurbished. So I was initially amazed and then unsurprised when people started messaging me that a 16th or 17th Century Torah scroll found in the small Portuguese city of Covilhã had just…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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