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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The Only Summer Book Guide You Need To Read
There can be no doubt that people who read are very passionate about reading. But reading is in trouble, because no one reads anymore. Why pick up a book when you could watch celebrities walking their dogs on Periscope or stream all 17 seasons of “House M.D.” using a Kindle Fire stick that’s plugged into…
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Joshua Cohen Is Watching You
In “Book of Numbers,” novelist Joshua Cohen has written a fictional exposé of the technological consequences of surveillance. The novel itself is quite a read, a nearly 600-page whirlwind that focuses on the protagonist, Joshua Cohen, a washed-up writer who has been chosen to write the memoir of another Joshua Cohen, the billionaire founder of…
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Film & TV Meet Sophie Tucker, the Yiddish Lady Gaga
Sophie Tucker used to open her act by saying her career dated back to the days when the Dead Sea was just sick. That, of course, is a slight exaggeration. But from around 1907 almost until her death in 1966, the ribald Tucker was the Madonna of her time. Today, in an age when fame…
The Latest
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How Jews Parted With Possessions Before Craigslist
Got stuff? If you’re anything like me, your closets bulge with clothes you’ve haven’t worn in years, your kitchen shelves are crowded with useless gadgets and the furniture in your living room is so worn out that it gives new – and literal – meaning to thread count. I’d say it’s time to de-clutter and…
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How the Archive Thief Saved History — Then Stole It
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust By Lisa Moses Leff, Oxford University Press, 304 pages, $29.95 Seven decades on, we are still taking stock of the ancillary losses that were part of the Holocaust: the appropriated homes and businesses, the scattered possessions, the purloined artworks…
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Orthodoxy’s Inconvenient Truths
Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History By Marc B. Shapiro The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 360 pages, $39.95 Orthodox Jews — especially Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox Jews — like to think of their religious practice as the most authentic form of Judaism. “We traditionally observant Jews… seek to observe the Torah’s mandate,…
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New York to London Town
Eytan Bayme and his wife, Cymbeline Kellett, met in New York City, his hometown, and after a whirlwind romance they made the move to London, her hometown. He is 35 and a writer born and raised in Riverdale, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx. She, 34, runs a specialist media-buying agency for the arts…
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The Only Abe Foxman Interview You Need To Read
Watching Abraham Foxman, outgoing national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wipe the tears off his face in front of an audience of about 1,200 people is an experience that one is not likely to witness often, if ever again. But it happened at a recent tribute to Foxman that took place at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria…
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How Omar Sharif Worked For Religious Tolerance
The greatest achievement of Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, who died on July 10 in Cairo, may have been to prove that simple nonchalance may be the best path for mutual tolerance between religions. Acclaimed for screen performances in “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago,” Sharif courted controversy by accepting the role of American Jewish gambler…
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For Charles Aaron, It’s All About the Bikes
Charles Aaron grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, the same Minneapolis suburb that spawned Thomas Friedman, Al Franken and the Coen brothers, only Aaron had different ambitions: He wanted to run a professional bike team. His father gave him a Schwinn 10-speed for his bar mitzvah, which Aaron began racing, at first holding his…
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Harper Lee’s Jewish Lessons
Harper Lee passed away on February 19, at the age of 89. Alexandra Levine remembers the author’s Jewish lessons. “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published in 1960, and this week, 55 years later, the sequel comes out: “Go Set a Watchman.” The title is a biblical reference to Isaiah 21:6 — “For thus hath the…
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