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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A Work of Heartbreaking Genius and Erudition
The crisis facing American Jews today is the result of the comfort of their surroundings. The barriers to assimilation Jews faced in the past are now gone, if not reversed, rendering the border between liberal Jew and non-Jew a thing of the past. And yet, one author, raised in liberal Judaism’s bosom, has been quietly…
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A Monument to the World Before the Holocaust
“At the end of the world, there is a high mountain, and on that mountain, there is a huge rock, and from that huge rock a pure spring comes gushing out. And at the other end of the world, there is the heart of the world… And the heart of the world gazes and gazes…
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The Voodoo That Jews Do
It’s not every day that a Voodoo priestess kicks you out of her temple for asking about the lost books of Moses. But as we stood in Miriam Chamani’s Voodoo Spiritual Temple in New Orleans, asking about the connection between Voodoo and Judaism, she grew more and more agitated. “Would you go up to the…
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Vienna’s Catskills
For the last five years, Austrian artist Yvonne Oswald has been attempting to recreate a world where Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel and Gerhart Hauptmann shared conversations over dinner, while nearby, Arthur Schnitzler wrote in his diary. In this fantastical universe, visitors stood on hotel terraces that looked out toward golf courses and ski jumps, while…
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Food, Sex and Giving to Charity
You’d think that despair and anger about social injustice, deadly diseases and natural calamities would be the primary drivers for donations to charity. But these feelings only represent half of the story. While it is true that we are more likely to give if we are aware of needs (increased media coverage about earthquakes, for…
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How America’s Oldest Jewish Charity Stays on No-Frills Path
If you search for the offices of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, you will not find any. America’s oldest Jewish charitable organization in continuous existence has never had an official headquarters, and most likely never will. That’s not the only thing that distinguishes FHBS from other charities: It has no paid staffers; its members work…
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Looking for S. An-sky’s Papers, I Found Historical Gems Lost to Decay
The Judaica department of Ukraine’s vast state library — one of the 10 largest in the world — occupies five rooms on the fourth and top floor of a Soviet-built branch of the system’s archipelago of buildings, which are spread across Ukraine’s capital. In a nod toward Ukraine’s energy crisis, the building is drafty and…
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Of Mardi Gras, Britney Spears and 6 Other Things About Jewish Louisiana
1) Louisiana is home to 10,675 Jews, which is 0.2% of the state’s total population. 2) The first king of New Orleans’ popular Rex Carnival Mardi Gras parade in 1872 was Louis Solomon, a local businessman. 3) Judah Benjamin was a U.S. Senator from Louisiana from 1853 to 1861. After that, he became the Attorney…
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What Would You Do If Someone Thought Your Son Was God?
What do you do if your toddler is a god? (To start, hold the Jewish mother jokes.) In Sarah Ruhl’s beautiful and searching new play, “The Oldest Boy,” now playing at Lincoln Center Theater’s off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse Theater, a Catholic-raised, all-American mother is visited by a pair of Buddhist monks, who inform her that her…
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11 Greatest Mike Nichols Moments
Born Mikhail Peschkowsky in Berlin, Mike Nichols went on to become one of the greatest forces in American comedy and film. An early member of Chicago’s Compass Players, which went on to become Second City, one half of Nichols and May, director of “The Graduate,” “Catch 22,” and most recently “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Nichols has…
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How ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Shattered My Dreams
When “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in the fall of 1964, I was singing in the chorus in “Ben Franklin In Paris,” another Broadway show, which starred Robert Preston. I also performed in the ballroom scene whenever one of the dancers wasn’t feeling well, because I was the only singer who could also…
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