Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
-
That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
-
A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to the Rolling Stones Concert
On a third floor balcony across the street from me in central Jerusalem, a strange ceremony is taking place. On one side of the balcony stands a heavy-set religious man with a an oversized white dress and a huge black skullcap, and on the other side an attractive young blond woman, dressed in colorful clothes,…
-
Michael Shannon Makes Eugene Ionesco’s Disorienting ‘The Killer’ Memorable
The first task would be to describe the play. In the case of the production of Eugene Ionesco’s “The Killer” currently running at Theatre for a New Audience, this is not so easy to do. We open on Berenger (Michael Shannon), the shambling existentialist everyman who frequently leads us through Ionesco’s plays, touring a neighborhood…
The Latest
-
Books David Bezmozgis Turning ‘Natasha’ Into Film
Photo: David Franco A decade after its publication, Canadian author David Bezmozgis is turning his debut short story collection, “Natasha and Other Stories,” into a film. As with “Victoria Day,” his first cinematic endeavor in 2009, Bezmozgis, a graduate of the University of Southern California’s film school, is both writing and directing the project. The…
-
The Secret Jewish History of The Rolling Stones
When the Rolling Stones take the stage at HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv on June 4, it represents more than just the world’s greatest and longest-running rock band’s first concert in Israel. It also marked one small victory in the war against a rock ’n’ roll boycott of Israel being waged by some English rockers,…
-
233 Reasons Why Bob Dylan Is Right To Detest His Fans
The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob By David Kinney Simon & Schuster, 256 pages, $25 ‘The Dylanologists” is a truly maddening book. Ostensibly, it is the story of the obsessive, sometimes paranoid fans who pore over every Bob Dylan lyric and concert, who worship, scrutinize, stalk, analyze and clearly annoy the man himself….
-
Why Rabbi Schneerson Was Good For Jews But Bad For Biographers
Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History By Joseph Telushkin HarperWave, 640 pages, $29.99 My Rebbe By Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz Maggid, 250 pages, $24.95 At the end of time, when climate change or an asteroid or the Messiah’s arrival has rendered moot Pharrell Williams, the Affordable…
-
Guinness Record Holder For Longest Theater Career Dies at 90
In 2011, it was announced that the Israeli actress Hanna Maron had set a Guinness world record for the longest career in theater. Born Hanna Meierzak in Berlin in 1923 to a Polish father and mother of Hungarian origin, she began acting at age 4, and appeared in German silent films, as well as performing…
-
Why God Can Sometimes Sound Female
Irving Salzman has a question about an ancient Hebrew prayer, the answer to which involves some fine points of linguistic history that may not interest everyone. Yet since the prayer is one that all of you who are synagogue-goers know and may have wondered about, too, I’ll risk discussing it. The prayer begins with the…
-
A Jew Joins the Académie Française
In April, after the deaths in recent years of such venerable French Jewish members as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and biologist François Jacob, the Académie française increased its quotient of Yiddishkeit. That day, the author Alain Finkielkraut, born in Paris in 1949 to a family of Polish Jewish origin, was elected to join the group of…
-
6 Lessons From Young Dr. Sigmund Freud
Seventy-five years after his death, Sigmund Freud still remains an eminent figure of Western culture. The Viennese doctor’s theories about the workings of the human psyche, from dreaming to homosexuality, are considered outdated by many researchers and practitioners. But various forms of psychotherapy including psychoanalysis, also known as “the talking cure” live on. “Becoming Freud,”…
-
Bernard Berenson and the Art of Seduction
● Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade By Rachel Cohen Yale University Press, 344 pages, $18.98 Born Bernhard Valvrojenski in 1865 to a tin-peddling father in the Pale of Settlement, Bernard Berenson transformed himself into one of the most influential connoisseurs of Italian Renaissance art. An aspiring scholar, Berenson wrote a series of…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
- 2
News A Jewish farmer drove 600 miles to rescue a century-old synagogue. Now he’s building a new one in a cornfield.
- 3
Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
- 4
Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward After IDF intercepts Greta Thunberg’s Gaza flotilla, crew posts videos calling themselves ‘kidnapped’
-
Opinion The righteous rabbis protesting those immigration raids in Los Angeles
-
Fast Forward Israel recovers remains of Thai farmworker abducted on Oct. 7 from Gaza
-
Yiddish World How my grandparents met: a Yiddish-American romance
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
