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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Will a Selfie at Auschwitz Make You Free?
A couple of weeks ago, I stood before a crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau and listened to the tour guide talk about the sonderkommandos. The sonderkommandos, he explained quietly, were the prisoners tasked with removing dead corpses from the gas chambers – after the victims had been showered with cyanide and choked to death – and then…
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Moliere as a Sitcom, Complete With Jewish Mother Jokes
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most marriageable of all? According to a recent New York Times article, “How To Make Online Dating Work,” 70% of gay and lesbian couples meet online. Unfortunately, no one sent a link of that article to Jordan Berman (Gideon Glick), the gay man at the heart of Joshua…
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Me and the Horse General Custer Rode In On
Last night I got one of those stomach-churning emails: I had made a mistake in the big feature I wrote about Jewish slaveowners in Kentucky. The mistake was this: Towards the end of the piece, I had mentioned an 1871 visit that George Armstrong Custer, the cavalry officer famous for dying at Little Bighorn, paid…
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A Short History of The Viral Jewniverse
“The Hannukah Song,” 1994 Adam Sandler first performed his now-ubiquitous anti-alienation anthem on the “Saturday Night Live” sketch, “Weekend Update,” in 1994, a full decade before YouTube’s 2006 launch. But the song is one of those pre-Internet cultural objects given new life in cyberspace. Count up the views on various versions online and the total…
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Looking Back at ‘The Bridge’ and Germany’s Lost Generation
If movies have taught us anything, it’s that the legacy of World War II is many times bigger and more varied than we thought – no matter what we had thought. Each year, documentaries are unleashed that limn another heretofore dark corner of the Holocaust, or the Jewish refugee experience, or an ambiguous Nazi pathology,…
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Remembering Frank Kameny, the Moses of the LGBT Movement
On July 2, a party at the National Museum of American Jewish History kicks off a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the LGBT civil rights movement at Independence Hall, Philadelphia. A half-century ago, activists from New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia protested for equality each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front…
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Remembering Britain’s ‘Schindler,’ Nicholas Winton
Nicholas Winton, who has died at the age of 106, exemplifies the fact that to do good deeds, years of preparation are not necessary. Effective humanitarian action can be impromptu and seemingly random in origin. Born Nicholas Wertheimer in London in 1909 to German Jewish parents, Winton was a young stockbroker in 1938, planning his…
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My Hunt for the Big Jew of the Cumberland Gap
On my second day in Eastern Kentucky, I ate an Arby’s roast beef sandwich that tasted like a wet brown paper towel. That was lunch on the trail of the long-dead nightclub owner they called the Big Jew. The Big Jew used to have a dancehall near the Cumberland Gap, with slot machines and liquor…
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Film & TV How Do You Talk God Out of The Apocalypse? Ask Eli Shapiro.
Jewish humor is safe, even in these modern times. Writer/director Eli Shapiro, a young New Jerseyite living in the Big City, is upholding the tradition of somewhat cynical, yet utterly thoughtful social commentary in the name of comedy: his recent short film, “Ike Interviews God,” portrays a wholly average insurance clerk in conversation with an…
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Seeking My Sweet Spot — Six Feet Under
I recently bought my grave because my wife, 10 years my junior and exceedingly practical, has been urging me to decide what I want concerning my ultimate disposal. Debbie has not failed to notice, as I approach my 70th birthday, that time may be nigh. She prefers I be cremated, but I have been insistent…
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Why Are These Secular Kids Learning Yiddish?
If you visit Brooklyn’s Middle School 88 late on a Wednesday afternoon, you’ll witness something pretty unusual. The building sits on the southern edge of Park Slope, down the block from Green-Wood Cemetery and next to the noisy Prospect Expressway. Huddling around a table in a science classroom a handful of kids are studying Yiddish….
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