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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Q&A — Michael Chabon Talks Occupation, Injustice and Literature After Visit to West Bank
The author Michael Chabon was on a tour of Hebron in the West Bank when he met an unexpected fan in a nearby group of Israeli soldiers on duty in the divided city. “I’ve actually read your books,” one young soldier said, recognizing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”…
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Could Nathan the Wise Really Be the Second Greatest Jewish Character Ever?
When I studied in London, I frequently ran into street vendors selling black-and-white photographs of standard city scenes – a telephone booth, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey – in which a single detail, like a bus or street sign, would be colored red, a shock amongst the sedate. Sometimes the result was lovely, but more frequently…
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Chanan Tigay’s Mad Search for the World’s Oldest Bible
The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Bible By Chanan Tigay Ecco, 368 pages, $27.99 Before Bedouins discovered the first Dead Sea Scrolls, in 1947 in a cave near the Dead Sea, another ancient manuscript briefly enraptured the archaeological community and promised to transform biblical scholarship. The find in question was…
The Latest
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Music A Jewish Tribute to Prince, Holy Unifier of Spirit and Sex
We get older when those we love — first parents, then peers and friends — pass away. Death becomes real, not an abstraction. Not only can it happen anytime; it does happen anytime. I think that’s true when celebrities pass also. This year, Prince and David Bowie; not long ago, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston….
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Setting Aside a Moment for the Uprising
Because the first night of Passover in 1943 was also the first night of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, many Seder observers set time aside the first night to commemorate its heroic martyrs. Although it’s a tradition that has passed out of fashion, it still remains strong within the Yiddish community. As we celebrate a festival…
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Forward Looking Back
1916 100 Years Ago The Jewish quarter of Bayonne, New Jersey, is reeling after a scandalous episode occurred in which a Jewish landlord evicted an elderly couple on the first day of the Passover holiday. The couple, who have lived in the house at 88 W. 18th St. in Bayonne for nearly two years, have…
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Confessions of a Haggadah Hoarder
You can see life in all sorts of ways — in photos, through journals, in stories told and memories shared. But I can see mine in a large plastic storage box in my basement. There it is, on the floor behind the furnace: my life in Passover Haggadot. Did I say one bin? I meant…
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This Is How You Don’t Write an Obituary For Prince
This is the part where you first read the news. This is the part where you still think it might be a hoax. This is the part where you learn that it isn’t. This is the part where you recall where you first became aware of his music — in a friend’s family home in…
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3 Ways To Honor Harriet Tubman on Passover
Giving into popular, “Hamilton”-loving demand, the Treasury Department has announced that instead of replacing Alexander Hamilton with a woman on the $10 bill, they’ll be making room by knocking Andrew Jackson off the $20. And their choice to replace him? Harriet Tubman. The announcement was met with mixed responses. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew initially promised…
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Enter David Duchovny’s (Half) Jewish New York, Through His New Novel
For both David Duchovny and the protagonist of his latest novel, “Bucky F*cking Dent” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) literary talent runs in the family. The “X-Files” actor and late-blooming musician is the descendant of several generations New York writers. The son of a Jewish father and a Scottish mother, he grew up in the East…
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Film & TV For Ronit Elkabetz, Being Human Was the Only Option
The Israeli actress and director Ronit Elkabetz, who died on April 19 at age 51, was noted for her masterful portrayal of tragic figures with few or no exit options. Yet in life she retained powerful optimism about the restorative value of drama for bringing people closer together. When she died prematurely of cancer, leaving…
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