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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Mitzvah Accomplished
A few Octobers ago, I found myself in TriBeCa, ambling down Hudson Street. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I’d just gotten back from a three-day visit with my parents for Sukkot. Up ahead, I spotted two Lubavitcher teenagers, smiling and eager, green lulavim gripped in their fists like Jedi swords. I slowed and squinted…
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Dennis Ross and His Perilous Balancing Act on Israel
Doomed To Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship From Truman to Obama By Dennis Ross Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 496 Pages, $30 Israel: Is it good for the Americans? According to Dennis Ross, who has served as a Middle East negotiator or consultant, or both, in four administrations, including the current one, this is a question that…
The Latest
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Still Life With Chicken: A Writer’s Journey
August 1985 Dusk falls in Iowa. I sit around the back-porch table with Tobias Wolff, Geoffrey Wolff, Lazar Wolf, Wolf Blitzer, Richard Brautigan, Leonard Michaels, and Gordon Lish, all my mentors. The pages of my first workshop short story sit in front of them. They all stare at me, mouth agape, near-tears, except for Lish,…
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Film & TV Sarah Silverman’s New Movie Is a Safari of Despair
If you’ve never felt deep depression or anxiety, “I Smile Back” is like a safari of despair. To your left, you will see a woman falling apart on the bathroom floor, to your right, a son suffering from anxiety, a family falling apart. Behind and ahead are daddy issues, drug addiction. Reckless and joyless sex…
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Art Have These Jewish Ghosts Been Haunting New York?
It’s surprisingly difficult to pinpoint the Jewish ghosts and haunts of New York. Although museum directors and tour guides rack their brains, they often end up stumped. Google searches on “Jewish ghosts New York City” yield no results. Of course, spirits usually seem to be disembodiments of famous figures. Some died tragically of disease, others…
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Geraldine Brooks Reimagines King David — for Better and Worse
The Secret Chord By Geraldine Brooks Viking, 320 pages, $27.95 Musician and warrior, shepherd and poet, anointed of God and guilt-ridden sinner, the biblical King David is a compelling and contradictory figure. In her latest work of historical fiction, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks (“March,” “People of the Book,” “Caleb’s Crossing”) heightens those contradictions,…
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Is ‘City On Fire’ Too Big To Fail?
City on Fire By Garth Risk Hallberg Knopf, 944 pages, $18 It may not be possible to speak of Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut novel, “City on Fire,” without mentioning a few numbers. So here goes: The book’s 944 pages include some facsimile interludes and reproductions of fanzines, letters and typewritten, booze-stained long-form reportage, all ostensibly…
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How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Became ‘Notorious’
What do a deceased East Coast rapper and a petite Jewish Supreme Court justice have in common? They’re both Notorious. Over the past few years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been enjoying an unlikely pop culture moment. “Notorious RBG,” the Tumblr account created by NYU law student Shana Knizhnik comparing Ginsburg to rapper Biggie Smalls (aka…
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Film & TV What’s Eating Phil Rosenthal?
Name-dropping alert! Fifteen years ago I was introduced to Phil Rosenthal by the legendary comedy writer/producer Norman Lear. I was a huge fan of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” which Phil created and executive produced for nine years and for which he won two Emmys, and he said he was a huge fan of my first book,…
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When Will Anne Frank Enter the Public Domain?
The Anne Frank Fonds was established in Basel, Switzerland, in 1963 by Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, as a charitable foundation. On October 6, the AFF informed Livres Hebdo, a French book trade publication, that the copyright on the “Diary of Anne Frank” would not expire in 2016, as had been expected to…
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Could Paul Beatty Be the New Philip Roth? Nope, He Just Won the Man Booker Prize.
In May, 2015, we profiled Paul Beatty, author of “The Sellout.” Now that Beatty has become the first American to win the Man Booker Prize, we’re revisiting that article. As it turns out, Beatty isn’t that much like Roth after all — Roth never won the Booker (he did, however, win the Man International Booker in 2011)….
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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 Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian writer targeted by far-right pro-Israel activists, wins Pulitzer for commentary
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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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Opinion Is Israel really going to reoccupy Gaza? Ask Trump
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