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
Granta Magazine Launches Israeli Edition
Israel is known for all kinds of things — a burgeoning local food scene, TV series like “Homeland” and “In Treatment,” and high tech companies like Waze. Now, with the launch of Granta Israel, a Hebrew edition of the prestigious magazine started by Cambridge University students in 1889, Israel is officially an international literary powerhouse….
-
What’s a Jewish Boy Like Him Doing in a Basketball League Like This?
As a high school sophomore, Michael Jordan was relegated to his junior varsity basketball team. In an entirely unrelated event, Idan Ravin did not make his 7th grade squad. Of course, the team Jordan didn’t make was one of the top high school teams in the country, while Ravin’s failure took place at a Jewish…
-
How the Bible Became as American as American Cheese
Our nation’s capitol is an exciting place in which to live and work. You never know who or what you’re going to come across. A famous face, the presidential motorcade, clusters of ordinary Americans dressed for all the world as if they were 18th century colonists come back to life in the 21st are the…
The Latest
-
Music Latin America Leaders Jet Into Israel Ahead of Pope Francis
Jewish and Catholic religious leaders from six Latin American countries will make a pilgrimage to the Middle East following the route that Pope Francis will take on his upcoming visit to the region. Young priests and rabbis from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela will share a seminar and visits to holy sites on…
-
Music Women Move Towards Approval as First Israel Kosher Supervisors
(JTA) — In a step that further expands the opportunities for women to serve as recognized authorities in Jewish law, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate for the first time is allowing women to serve as kosher supervisors. Nine women took the Chief Rabbinate’s kosher supervision exam last week in Jerusalem. Should they pass, they would become…
-
Music France ‘Not So Pleasant’ for Jews: Leader
(JTA) — France’s flag has three stripes, and its motto promotes three values: liberty, equality and fraternity. Now, its Jewish community — Europe’s largest — faces three threats, according to Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organizations and a vice president of the World Jewish Congress. In an appearance at…
-
Music New Mexico Students Reverse Divestment Vote
The Graduate and Professional Student Association at the University of New Mexico overturned a divestment resolution on the West Bank. Saturday’s vote rescinded an April 28 resolution calling on the university to divest from companies that operate in the West Bank. The vote was 10-10, with the tie broken by the meeting chair. Since the…
-
Music John Kerry to Meet With Mahmoud Abbas in London on Thursday
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet in London on Thursday, the U.S. State Department said, less than a month after a U.S. effort to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal collapsed. The focus of the talks is the U.S.-Palestinian relationship, the State Department said, a possible reference to whether…
-
Fiction Meets Reality in Croatian Novel About Nazi’s Son
● Trieste By Daša Drndić, Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 368 pages. $27 In Gorizia, near Trieste, near Italy’s border with Slovenia, an 83-year-old woman named Haya Tedeschi has been waiting 62 years — since 1944 — for the return of her abducted little boy, Antonio. For years she has…
-
Film & TV Celebrating the Beauty of Israel in Film
On Yom Haatzmaut morning, bright and early at 8:30 am, my four-year-old son Asher broke a crystal vase. It was an accident, but it could have been avoided. He could have chosen to play in a different place, and we as parents could have guided him better in his morning shenanigans. Horrified, Asher asked if…
-
How Some Piffle About Mr. Pouffle Inspired John Kerry’s ‘Poof’
If anyone thought “Poof!” would go poof in a single column, he or she thought wrongly. That column ended, you may recall, with my tracing the word with which John Kerry summed up the failure of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations to the phrase “Piff, paff, pouf” in the French Jewish composer Jacques Offenbach’s opera “La Grande-Duchesse…
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
- 2
Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
- 3
Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
- 4
Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion What Democrats fighting Trump should learn from Germany’s failure to stop Hitler
-
Fast Forward 31st anniversary of AMIA bombing marked by ceremonies in Argentina, Israel and, for the first time, Congress
-
Fast Forward Mike Huckabee to Israel: End hostile treatment of Christian allies
-
Fast Forward Connie Francis, 20th-century star turned TikTok sensation, recorded an album of Jewish songs in 1960
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism