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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Granddaughters of the Shoah
Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind By Sarah Wildman Riverhead Books, 400 pages, $27.95 A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France By Miranda Richmond Mouillot Crown, 288 pages, $26 The latest Holocaust memoirs are by people who weren’t there, who are linked to the tragedy by the…
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Of Gilda Radner, Ivan Boesky, Boisterous Brisket and 9 Other Facts About Jewish Michigan
1) 82,270 Jews live in Michigan. 2) Michigan’s first Jewish settler was Ezekiel Solomon. A fur trader, he operated a general store during the Revolutionary War. 3) Montreal-born fur trader Chapman Abraham was Detroit’s first Jewish settler, arriving there in 1762. 4) Founded in 1885 in Traverse City, Congregation Beth El is Michigan’s oldest synagogue….
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An Eccentric Archeologist Who Drew a Line in the Sand
A German Jewish Iranologist, who lost his University of Berlin post in 1935 after officially declaring that his grandparents were Jewish, is one of several focuses of an exhibit about Asian travel at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. “The Traveler’s Eye: Scenes of Asia” is on view through May 31. Ernst Herzfeld…
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‘Conversion’ Is Key to Early Education
A new effort underway in Denver, backed by a wide-ranging coalition of Jewish organizations, hopes to use modern marketing techniques to increase enrollment at early childhood education centers and, in the process, lure a new generation of young and sometimes leery families back into Jewish life. The goals of the $810,000 initiative, led by the…
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The Neal Pollack Guide to Awards Season
Awards season is here. I love it so much that I wish I were receiving an award myself. Seriously, I will accept any award, from any ceremony, in any category. “Where is my award?” I will ask, while watching my TV. But absent some miraculous occurrence whereby I am transported into another dimension in which…
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Behind the Small Screen at Jon Stewart’s Gig
Forget bagels, Katz’s Deli and Crown Heights — New York City doesn’t get any Jewy-er than at the Daily Show: The taping of the fake news comedy show from Comedy Central has a) Jon Stewart, b) free tickets and c) did I mention Jon Stewart? Located in a nondescript building on 11th Avenue near West…
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How Iranian-Jewish Women Started a Writers’ Revolution
The Jews of Iran: The History, Religion and Culture of a Community in the Islamic World Edited by Houman Sarshar I.B. Tauris, 264 pages, $99 Of the 80,000 or so Jews still living in Iran when the 1979 Islamic revolution occurred, the vast majority have fled, leaving a community of about 20,000 to 25,000, according…
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Books Greener Pastures for Treasured Cookbook Shop
Bookshop owner Bonnie Slotnick took a quick break from packing to have her picture taken outside the 10th Street store. Photographs by Liza Schoenfein I was happy to read at the end of last week that Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, the beloved little shop on West 10th Street that recently lost its lease, had found new…
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Like Father, Like Daughter? Hopefully Not When It Comes to ‘I’m Gonna Pray for You.’
He’s been discoursing for a while, this character called David Berryman—né Bergenstein — drinking and smoking (the pot and coke will come later) and telling well-worn stories, and now he’s in high dudgeon over the suggestion he might have regrets. “Everything I did — every decision I made — led me right here — right…
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Al Pacino Plays a Philip Roth Character Gone Literally Insane in ‘The Humbling’
It’s always a mystery why anyone would want to turn a Philip Roth novel into a movie. Despite the author’s immense talent and celebrity, his writing — rich with ideas and emotional conflict, light on concrete action — doesn’t lend itself to the big screen. Recent attempts to render his books cinematically, like “The Human…
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Books Book Critics Nods to Roz Chast, Gary Shteyngart
Photo: Martyna Starosta Forward 50 members Roz Chast and Gary Shteyngart are among the 30 nominees for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The award, given to books in the areas of autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry, is given by the book critics and book review editors of the National Book Critics…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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Fast Forward Cuomo says key factor in his primary loss was Mamdani’s support from young, Jewish, and pro-Palestinian voters
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Fast Forward Elon Musk wants your kids to use his chatbot. The same one that praised Hitler.
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Fast Forward Nation’s largest teachers union rejects move to cut ties with ADL
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Culture In this Holocaust story, there are few words, no swastikas, no yellow stars — just movement, passion and empathy
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