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 Jewish Comedian’s Guide to China
(JTA) — How do you tell a joke in China about Jews when the only things most Chinese think they know about the Chosen People is that they’re smart and good with money? That was Jesse Appell’s quandary when he moved to China three years ago from Massachusetts with plans to become a comedian — and,…
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Why Al Pacino Is Wrong To Reject a Nazi Sympathizer
This week actor Al Pacino, a cinematic legend, canceled his participation in a Danish theater adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel “Hunger” (1890). The reason, said the Aveny-T theater’s manager, Jon Stephenson, was that Pacino “couldn’t come to terms with Knut Hamsun’s support for the German occupation and Nazism.” And while there’s no question that Hamsun’s…
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Cooking Sabra-Style in Brooklyn
Israeli native , 44, is a chef and restaurateur, who with her husband Stefan Nafziger, 39, owns and manages some of New York City’s most popular eateries. Their three restaurants, Balaboosta, Taïm and Bar Bolonat offer contemporary Israeli food that has earned them some accolades along the way. Admony and Nafziger have been living together…
The Latest
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How David Javerbaum Became Ghost Writer for God
David Javerbaum’s list of accomplishments stretches from Earth all the way to heaven. He’s won 11 Emmys and two Peabody awards as writer and producer of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” While there, he helped author “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” (winner of the Thurber Prize for Humor) and its…
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Music Why Neil Diamond Still Matters
Back in 1967, in the midst of his initial run of brilliantly pithy three-chord pop singles, Neil Diamond cut a pair of radio jingles for Coca-Cola. One of them was an upbeat rocker in the Latin-tinged “Cherry, Cherry” vein, the other a slow strummer that built to a crescendo a la “I Got the Feelin’…
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Why the World Still Needs Saul Bellow
The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune By Zachary Leader Knopf, 832 pages, $40 ‘Was I a man or was I a jerk?” Saul Bellow asked on his deathbed. By “man,” of course, he meant mensch. Zachary Leader, Bellow’s new biographer, answers Bellow’s dying question: “Both.” Bellow was a jerk: Famously prickly and…
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Keeping a Close Watch on the Zombie Wars of Chicago
The Making of Zombie Wars By Aleksandar Hemon Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pages, $26 Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel “The Making of Zombie Wars” is preceded by two epigraphs. The first, attributed to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, reads, “The mind can neither imagine anything, nor recollect past things, except while the body endures.” The second…
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Why My Father Wouldn’t Let Me Read Marjorie Morningstar
When I was a young teenager in the late 1970s, my father forbade me to read “Marjorie Morningstar,” Herman Wouk’s 1955 novel chronicling the eponymous Marjorie’s coming of age in the 1930s. Marjorie, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who worked their way out of the Bronx and to Manhattan’s Upper West Side,…
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Investigating Yavneh’s Bustling Drug Scene — from 3,000 Years Ago
Before the central Israeli town of Yavneh became a residence for police officers and IDF officers, it featured a varied drug scene, including many different kinds of intoxicants and hallucinogens. Long before. These substances were used 3,000 years ago, during the Iron Age, and were an integral part of culture and ritual for the Philistines,…
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The Last Jews of Pike Place
The stamp of Sephardic Jews on Seattle is strong, from Benaroya Hall, where the Seattle Symphony plays, to the real estate holdings of the Alhadeff family, best known for the now-closed Longacres race track. But the ink of Sephardic influence is fading from Pike Place Market. The oldest operating market in the country, the biggest…
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Has Dr. Ruth Gone From Sex Pioneer to Angry Bubbe?
The Doctor Is In: Dr. Ruth on Love, Life, and Joie de Vivre By Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer Amazon Publishing $14.95 206 Pages In the past, I’ve gotten some good life lessons from my 86-year-old grandmother. They have ranged from “survival doesn’t ask if you’re a swine” (that’s how she explains getting out of Theresienstadt…
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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 Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News Why do some people think Mike Lawler is Jewish?
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Art At the Venice Biennale, protests, self-mutilation and rage against Israel and Russia. Is anyone left to talk about the art?