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
-
Film & TV
Do Marvel Movies Have an Anti-Semitism Problem?
It seems like I can’t go a day without reading about how anti-Semitism is on the rise—not just in Europe but also in the U.S. Sadly this is an attitude reflected in our own geek culture — specifically in the anti-Semitism found in X-Men and Marvel movie universe. Let’s start with the X-Men movies. Magneto,…
-
Ezra Mendelsohn Expressed Hope in Humanity’s Potential
The historian Ezra Mendelsohn, who has died of cancer at the age of 74, infused esthetics into the study of Jewish history to an unusual degree. As Rachel & Michael Edelman professor emeritus of European Jewry and Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University, he produced compelling books in which modern Jewish history is informed by…
-
Art Meet Chicago’s $500 Million Art Man
“Natürlich.” When asked if he collected things as a child, Stefan Edlis replied in impeccable German. Of course he did. “I was a stamp collector,” said Edlis, 89, industrialist and art collector, who recently donated over 40 works of art to the Art Institute of Chicago together with his wife, Gael Neeson, making it the…
The Latest
-
Art 12 Unforgettable Images by Forgotten Jewish Cartoonists
For every Al Hirschfeld — whose splashy retrospective just opened at the New York Historical Society — there’s a Sam Berman or Alan Jedla, star caricaturists whose fortunes faded along with the glory days of newspaper cartooning. But Drew Friedman and Stephen Kroninger won’t let them disappear. In fact, they conjured the artists on May…
-
My Venetian Bar Mitzvah
In Venice, my wife and I like to stay in the old ghetto, which sits in ideal proximity to sundry picturesque attractions, yet somehow feels insulated and tucked away. My hunch is that the neighborhood’s name, despite its antiquated origin, keeps away the riffraff. “This is where your people used to live,” my wife, Francesca,…
-
Art Was This Really Television’s Golden Age?
Halfway through my visit to the Jewish Museum, someone thought to turn down the Barbra Streisand. Or maybe I just got used to it. Either way, it was a blessing. For, the sound of Babs belting out the Peter Matz tune “Gotta Move,” from her 1966 CBS TV special, “Color Me Barbra,” threatened to drown…
-
The Sephardic Bibliophile of Brooklyn
On a nondescript street of brick row houses, nestled between an insurance office and a computer store, in an out of the way corner of Brooklyn known as Marine Park that is not on any subway lines, lies a small storefront. From the street, it’s impossible to see in — the glass windows are blocked…
-
HomeLands: Building a Brooklyn Nest
William Levin, 43, and his wife Malya Kurzweil Levin, 31, have lived together for five years in their beloved and rent stabilized apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. William is a creative tech consultant and cartoonist. Malya is a lawyer and currently works as a staff attorney at an elder abuse shelter, the at the Hebrew…
-
Growing Up Hasidic — and Racist
On April 22, 1987, my mother was rushed to Interfaith Medical Center, situated on the outskirts of Crown Heights in Brooklyn. My mother was new to this country, without anyone to guide her about things like where to give birth to her firstborn, me. She claims I was the only white baby in the nursery….
-
POEM: Vilna Fairytale
Over rooftops and forests, rivers, domes and the belfries of Vilna, the magic carpet in my mind flies to a small maze of buildings where the ghettos used to be. Near the river flats, and that green bridge Milosz writes about in a poem — the bridge where my mother was almost arrested for being…
-
When Deadwood Was Jewish
There were multitudes of Goldbergs in the Bronx where I grew up, but here in Deadwood, South Dakota? When I got here, few in my certifiably tiny Black Hills Jewish community knew much about its history. There was little to be found in books about Jews of the Old West. But soon, family names, microfilmed…
Explore
Most Popular
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
-
Looking Forward Stumbling across Jewish history in a vintage store
-
Film & TV Remembering Siskel and Ebert’s great debate: Mel Brooks or Woody Allen?
-
News A Jewish gun club teams up with the NRA, in pursuit of self-defense
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
