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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Ranking Woody Allen Lists on His 80th Birthday
In honor of Woody Allen’s 80th birthday, we thought we’d come up with a ranking of Allen’s movies. You know, all the way from #1 (Maybe “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or, say, “Stardust Memories” if you’re feeling contrarian) to #46 (how about “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” or “Melinda and Melinda” or “Brooklyn Jazz…
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How Jews Invented American Comedy
The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy By Kliph Nesteroff Grove Press, 448 Pages, $28.00 This book is about comedy, but it’s not very funny. Nor should it be: In his history of American comedy, Kliph Nesteroff writes about “drunks, thieves and scoundrels” — comedians, in a word. His book is…
The Latest
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Painting the Commandments, All 613 of Them
While Archie Rand was eating lunch at an Indian restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village in 2014, his agent told him and his wife that she’d landed a book deal to publish his series of 614 canvases — one per Old Testament commandment and an extra title painting. “I thought that some hippie in Saskatchewan had…
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The Jewish Story Behind the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank
Paul Moritz Warburg, a German-Jewish immigrant who was one of the founding fathers of the U.S. Federal Reserve, had a fervent wish that his creation would be seen as one of America’s great monuments — “like the old cathedrals of Europe.” Warburg’s dream that “the Fed” would become a cherished American institution has never looked…
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A Journey From Auschwitz to Rwanda
Born in 1949, the French author Jean Hatzfeld has focused with sustained attention on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, during which some half a million to a million Rwandans were killed between April and July. The victims belonged to the Tutsi population division, as well as some moderate members of the Hutu majority. Hatzfeld has assembled…
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The Sorrow and Pity of Arthur Miller’s ‘Incident at Vichy’
The trouble with a play like Arthur Miller’s “An Incident at Vichy” is the ubiquitous presence of Holocaust narratives in contemporary films and books. Recently, on NPR’s “Fresh Air” Terry Gross said of the movie “Son of Saul,” “At this point, I don’t want to go to a theater to watch such unbearable suffering unless…
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Why Israel Is One of the World’s Most Financially Literate Nations
Israel ranks among the best in the world when it comes to financial literacy, according to a new survey released by S&P Ratings, Gallup, the World Bank and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center (GFLEC) at George Washington University. “We didn’t have a comprehensive measure of financial literacy that would cover all the countries,” said…
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Law of Conservation of Sadness — Or, When Einstein Lets You Down
On the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Sigal Samuel presents a short story about what happens when the famous scientist can no longer be trusted. I had been dating Ben for two weeks, three days, eight hours, twenty-nine minutes and fifteen seconds when my best friend, Jay, got dumped. I biked to…
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Netflix’s ‘W/Bob and David’ is Half Jewish, All Haimish
When you see a Jewish Pope hawking Prilosec on an ATV by screaming obscenities at the one-too-many Kosher Turkey “Oysters” he ate, it’s safe to assume one of two things. Either: 1) You’re paying for all those brownies you ate at that Sublime concert 20 years ago. 2) Some iteration of “Mr. Show With Bob…
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Meet the World’s First 3-D Interactive Holocaust Survivor
Pinchas Gutter sits in a red chair in front of a black background. He hunches forward and rests his hands on his knees, his elbows bent. He wears a slate sweater vest with matching slacks. His skin tone looks just a bit too orange. He sits mostly still, but every so often he nods his…
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When Art Poses a Challenge to the Orthodox
Jens Hoffmann, Daniel S. Palmer and Kelly Taxter, the curators of the Jewish Museum, have a difficult job. They can’t help but recognize the limitations of revisiting the same narrow band of Jewish tropes with each and every show they present. There are only so many fresh ways to revisit the Holocaust, the Jewish immigrant…
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
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Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
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Fast Forward Dave Portnoy revokes Auschwitz trip for student who said ‘F– the Jews’
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Fast Forward A Jewish nonprofit may have accidentally caused Michigan to drop charges against pro-Palestinian activists
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Culture For Christian nationalists, Trump’s pope picture isn’t a joke
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