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
-
Books
Throwback Thursday: Novellas About Sexy Tel Aviv
Regina Kolitz // Copyright Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Publisher Heinrich H. Glanz created the Juedisch-Politische Bibliothek [Jewish-Political] series of books in Vienna before it was “confiscated” after Nazi Anschluss in 1938. After emigrating to…
-
Neil Diamond’s 32nd Album Is His Best in 40 Years
Sometime back in 1986, it finally dawned on me that Neil Diamond might actually be cool. This wasn’t the easiest or most logical conclusion to come to, having spent so much of my elementary and high school years cowering amid the bombastic onslaught of “Longfellow Serenade,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” (his wrist-slittingly maudlin divorce-rock…
-
The Foodlums of Connecticut
One Sunday this past August, I stopped by the farmers’ market in Morris, Connecticut. Morris is a small town (population about 2,400) in lush, hilly Litchfield County. It’s probably best known as the home of luxury resort Winvian, and its main intersections are governed only by a stop sign or a single red flashing light….
The Latest
-
How Jill Soloway Created ‘Transparent’ — the Jewiest Show Ever
On its face, “Transparent” is a television series about a transgender father coming out to his three young adult children. It weaves together the tragicomic family dynamics of five unbelievably narcissistic people. It is also arguably the Jewiest television show ever. Sure, lots of television shows have featured Jewish characters. In long-running series like “Seinfeld,”…
-
‘Klinghoffer’ Protesters United Against ‘Anti-Semitic’ Opera
On the first crisp night of fall, about a thousand people — many of them in wheelchairs — gathered outside the Metropolitan Opera to protest the opening night of John Adams’s opera “The Death of Klinghoffer.” Both sides of Broadway between 63rd and 68th street were closely secured by NYPD officers and some of their…
-
Books The Soviet Pastoral of David Bezmozgis
● THE BETRAYERS By David Bezmozgis Little, Brown, 240 pages, $26 David Bezmozgis’s slim new novel, “The Betrayers,” seems at first deceptively simple, then, at second glance, deceptively complex. Set against a historical and political background that becomes too heavy a burden to bear on its slender scaffolding, it is the story of a noble…
-
When ‘Klinghoffer’ Played the Heartland
The production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” at the Metropolitan Opera has caused a storm of anger among Jewish leaders and laypeople. Protests have drawn hundreds of Jews to the Met, and top New York Jewish leaders met with Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, urging him to cancel the opera. Major Jewish groups, including…
-
The Resurrection of ‘Klinghoffer’
Near a barren tree in the middle of a bleak, gray landscape, the Chorus of Exiled Palestinians mills about onstage. Wrapped in dark garments, their weary aspects suggesting immigrants at Ellis Island, they contrast starkly with the largely empty crimson-and-gold Metropolitan Opera House, its tiers of box seats wedding caked above each other. In the…
-
Lend Me Your (Yiddish) Earlocks
Even if one is naturally curious, one often accepts strange things unquestioningly for what they are. I suppose that’s why I never wondered about the odd phrase di linke peye, “the left ear lock,” in the Yiddish expression ikh hob es in der linker peye, “I have it in the left ear lock,” or es…
-
The Best Documentary Filmmaker You’ve Never Heard Of
Manny Kirchheimer is one of the New York City’s most under-appreciated documentary filmmakers. His film “Stations of the Elevated,” which is getting a retrospective theatrical run this week (Oct. 17 to Oct. 23) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is considered to be the first documentary about graffiti. However, calling “Stations of the Elevated a…
-
For David Bezmozgis, Fiction Must Go Far Beneath the Surface
The first thing I noticed about the writer David Bezmozgis when I sat down to breakfast with him in Brooklyn in late September was the tattoo on his forearm — a blue cursive Cyrillic D framed by a diamond. I first met Bezmozgis in 2010, and we’ve since become friends, and I’ve never shaken the…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
- 2
Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
- 3
Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
- 4
News Meet the Jews who helped elect Zohran Mamdani
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Israel is so concerned about homegrown Iranian spies it is launching a PR campaign to dissuade them
-
Books Legendary ‘King of Comedy’ Jerry Lewis placed a weekly Jewish deli order, his son recalls
-
Antisemitism Decoded How Grok’s Nazi escapade perfectly captured our antisemitic moment
-
Fast Forward Columbia adopts controversial antisemitism definition as it negotiates with Trump administration
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
