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
-
Film & TV
LGBT Issues Provide Challenges for Jewish Films
When the Washington Jewish Film Festival opens, on February 24, one of its most interesting offerings will be a series called “Rated LGBTQ.” It’s a curious title, given that movie ratings are used to help delineate which audiences are appropriate for a given film. On the one hand, it’s an invitation: Individuals who identify on…
-
When You’re a Gay Israeli, You Can Go Home Again
The 66th Berlin International Film Festival, or simply Berlinale as it is known here, unspooled with the international premiere of the Coen Brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!” a star-studded sendup of 1950s Hollywood, which is screening out of competition. After “True Grit” (which opened the Berlinale in 2011) and “Inside Llewyn Davis” (which took the Grand Prix…
-
That Time Allen Ginsberg Wrote a Socialist Poem — About Bernie Sanders
Last June, while digging through 50 boxes of archival material about Bernie Sanders’s four terms as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a reporter for the British newspaper the Guardian found a poem by Allen Ginsberg. Written by hand on a 1986 visit to the city, “Burlington Snow” didn’t name Sanders, but he was clearly the…
The Latest
-
Geeking Out on Primo Levi — and Elena Ferrante — With a Master Translator
The great Italian writer Primo Levi is primarily known in this country for memoirs detailing his experiences in Auschwitz, his long journey home after the end of the war and his life as a chemist of Jewish descent in the quiet precincts of Piedmont. These books, published in America as “Survival in Auschwitz,” “The Reawakening”…
-
Are All Jewish Men Shylocks?
Shylock Is My Name By Howard Jacobson Hogarth Shakespeare, 288 pages, $25 What to do with Shylock? I was pondering this question recently while browsing in a Barnes and Noble, when I noticed that they’d helpfully labeled the Humor shelf, “Books that make you laugh.” Especially with regard to some of them (“What Would Jesus…
-
Why Isn’t There More of a Hoohah About Kosher Bacon?
A recent culinary phenomenon has caught my eye: the steady advance of “kosher bacon,” a meat product that looks and tastes like the real thing. What intrigues me is not its popularity, or the ways in which once intact boundaries between kosher cuisine and its nonkosher counterparts have been increasingly erased. What I find most…
-
My Search for the ‘Male Shiksa’
I told him it was a double mitzvah to screw on Shabbat. SportsCenter on mute, music theory textbooks open in our laps. His pencil suspended above the fill-in-the-scale exercise. The Oklahoma goy and his new, exotic Jewish girlfriend. I relished the role. “What’s a mitzvah?” he asked. “A good deed.” There are 613 them, I…
-
60 Valentine’s Days Later, Dorothy and Al Laugh, Fuss and Remember
Al Hampel calls his wife Dorothy “Nurse Ratchett.” When they met 60 years ago, she supervised his work as a copywriter, and ran a tight ship. Today, at Brookdale Senior Living, she’s famous for her feisty attitude. Humor is one of the things that’s kept them together. Al makes fun of Dorothy for wearing gold…
-
Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago A case came before Judge Rosalsky in which one Louie Belish of 148 Norfolk Street in Manhattan stood accused of seducing a young girl and forcing her into a life of prostitution. The girl, known only as “Annie,” is a 17-year old brunette with whom he lived at 29 Stuyvesant Place….
-
For Shabbat, a Flower Ritual of Her Own
‘Oh, and along with the salad, could you bring some flowers for the table?” my then-fiancé asked. It was the first Shabbat we would be making “together” since my move from Minneapolis to join him in New York. Because my microscopic Manhattan kitchen was even smaller and harder to work in than his, we had…
-
Books The 14 Most Romantic Lines in Jewish Literature
Valentine’s Day is upon us, and ignoring the holiday’s relatively morbid roots in favor of its relatively charming modern incarnation, what better way to celebrate than with the romantic musings of some beloved Jewish writers? Should you be in need of lofty-sounding fodder with which to celebrate your loved ones — or woo those you’d…
Explore
Most Popular
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture How the phrase ‘It was promised to them 3,000 years ago’ became a ubiquitous meme
-
Art For an ‘adventuress’ who memorialized the Holocaust in art, a long-awaited revival
-
Opinion A Reichstag fire is blazing in Trump’s America and we know exactly who is fanning the flames
-
Yiddish נײַ בוך וועגן אַמאָליקן ניו־יאָרק איז ווי אַ סעודה פֿאַר ייִדישיסטןNew book about old New York City is like a feast for Yiddishists
דער מחבר הענעך סאַפּאָזשניק איז אַ גאָר פֿעיִקער װעגװײַזער איבער אַ פֿאַרלוירענער װעלט.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
