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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Why My Son Won’t Be Having a Bar Mitzvah
My son, who’s turning 13 on Halloween, won’t be having a bar mitzvah. This is what’s happening, or not happening. The entry in the Book of Life has been written, the invitations not sent out, the food truck and DJ not ordered. I feel shame and guilt and other emotions that I can’t identify, for…
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Film & TV Ingrid Bergman’s Lifelong Love Affair With the Jews
Ingrid Bergman, whose centenary is being celebrated on August 29, is cherished by film fans, especially for playing two foes of the Nazis: Ilsa Lund in “Casablanca” and Alicia Huberman in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious.” Her late-career incarnation as Golda Meir in the 1982 TV film “A Woman Called Golda” surprised some viewers. Yet her own…
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Books Is Israeli Children’s Book About Gaza Kittens Guilty of ‘Paw-Washing’?
My Facebook newsfeed is always alive with kittens, but last week it was alive with political kittens. Israeli author Nurit Sternberg has written a children’s book called “,” about two kittens “rescued” from last summer’s fighting zone in Gaza and brought to Israel by the IDF soldier Matan Meshi. Both the kittens and Meshi happen…
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Remembering Oliver Sacks, ‘Old Jewish Atheist’ With a Great Brain and Even Greater Heart
The English Jewish neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who died on August 30 at age 82, was famed for such studies as “Migraine,”; “Awakenings”; “A Leg to Stand On”; and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales” These imaginative accounts of maladies ranging from sleeping-sickness to nervous tics increasingly…
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Clarice Lispector’s Stories Aren’t Much Fun, But They’ll Sear Your Mind
The Complete Stories By Clarice Lispector, translated by Katrina Dodson New Directions, 640 pages, $28.95 Let us just get this out of the way: Reading the stories of Clarice Lispector, the Brazilian writer who has been dubbed the most important Jewish writer since Kafka, deemed the female Borges, and described as writing like Virginia Woolf…
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Breaking the Silence About Jewish Suicide
A few weeks ago a professional window cleaner came to work at my house in central Jerusalem. The window guy was an affable, middle-aged, native English speaker. After a brief episode of Jewish geography, he began cleaning on the top floor, working his way down to the main floor, where I was writing on my…
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Love and the Grammar of God
In her forthcoming book, ‘The Grammar of God,’ Aviya Kushner — a graduate of the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa and a creative writing professor at Columbia College Chicago — draws on lessons she has learned while collecting bibles and assessing the disparities in meaning that exist in its many translations. Through…
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12 Can’t-Miss Books for Fall
The tangled relationship between history and myth is one theme that emerges from our idiosyncratic and speculative preview of fall books. It should be fascinating, for example, to compare French Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano’s novelistic deconstruction of the French Resistance with Robert Gildea’s revisionist historical overview of the same subject, “Fighters in the Shadows.” Geraldine…
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Film & TV Should We Expect More From ‘Downton Abbey’ Than Whitewashed Anti-Semitism?
I have a confession: I am completely, utterly addicted to Downton Abbey. It might go against my progressive politics, or , but – let us tell the truth – it is a soap opera in gilded clothes. The sixth and final season is about to premiere next month in the United Kingdom (Americans will have…
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Music The Wagner Opera That’s OK for Jews To Love
In 1981, Zubin Mehta sent shockwaves through Israel by leading the country’s premiere orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, in a concert encore by Richard Wagner. It was the first time since the establishment of the State that the notoriously anti-Semitic composer’s work had been heard live in Israel. Despite the fighting and shouting in the auditorium,…
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Music The Secret Yiddish History of Public Enemy
If ever there was a time we needed to hear from hip-hop legends Public Enemy, this is it. One might assume that the group that gave voice and sound to the frustrations of African-Americans during the Reagan-Bush years would surely have something powerful to say about America in the age of Ferguson and Baltimore, Eric…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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News Middlebury College Hillel votes to rebrand, distancing from parent group on Israel
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News Alex Soros commits $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism — and its weaponization
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Fast Forward Israeli singer says he is tuning out ‘stop the genocide’ chants as he heads into Eurovision final
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Fast Forward Kristof column alleging Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners sparks outrage, scrutiny and debate among Jews
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Fast Forward From Rutgers speaker to Kristof column, disputed dog rape claim against Israel goes mainstream