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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Books
The Joys of Amos Oz at 75
In Amos Oz’s “Rhyming Life and Death” it’s a sticky night in Tel Aviv, and the Author is to give a reading. Surveying the room, he begins to fashion life stories for the people attending. He takes note of a boy of about 16, moving restlessly in his chair. “He looks unhappy,” the Author thinks….
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‘Ida’ Revisits Poland in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Pawel Pawlikowski left Poland at the age of 14, but his childhood memories of his homeland never left him. It’s no surprise then that “Ida,” a stunning portrait of two very different women whose lives intersect in 1960s Poland, is the director’s most assured and confident narrative feature yet. The film takes place in the…
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Music There’s No Storm in Sight But Clouds Loom for Israel as Peace Talks Collapse
With even the illusion of a peace process now dead, experts’ predictions of what will fill the vacuum range from a new intifada to continued peace and prosperity for Israel. Israel is, in other words, now on untested ground, and what the future holds is anyone’s guess. Still, some of those guessing about the new…
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When Diane Arbus Met a Giant in Her Field
Diane Arbus’s “Jewish Giant,” the second installment in the Jewish Museum’s innovative Masterpieces & Curiosities series, is an entire show dedicated to interrogating the competing meanings contained within a single photograph by Diane Arbus. The photo itself, “A Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y, 1970,” is mounted in a vitrine…
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Music Basketball World Unites in Cheering Ban of Donald Sterling
The basketball world was united in their support for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver following his decision to ban Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life and fine him $2.5 million for racist comments. Past and present players and other team owners all voiced their approval after Silver effectively booted Sterling out of the game,…
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Making a Mockery of Hitler’s Mockery of Degenerate Art
When I looked for the first time at the painting that used to hang above Adolf Hitler’s mantel, I felt weirdly emotionless. It’s a triptych called “The Four Elements,” painted by Adolf Ziegler, and it displays four fair-haired naked women representing fire, water, soil and air. It can currently be viewed in New York City,…
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Actor Omar Sharif Won’t Compete in World Bridge Olympics with Israelis
1913 •100 years ago Jews of Kiev Evicted Reports from Russia reveal that the Jews of Kiev are under renewed attack. An official administrative order announced that 580 Jewish families must leave the city immediately. The order was issued in the wake of revelations that a large of number of Jewish families had obtained residence…
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Books 100 Years Later, Revisiting Franz Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ and World War I
This year marks the centennial of two landmarks of modernity: World War I and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.” Both events have their origins in 1914, but neither ever truly ended: Upon his death in 1924, Kafka left behind an unfinished manuscript, while the peacemakers at Versailles left behind an unresolved war. Beyond their incomplete natures,…
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Solving a Linguistic Mystery as Quickly as ‘Poof’
It would be ironic if the single sentence for which John Kerry, an articulate politician, were to be remembered one day were “Poof!” And yet Mr. Kerry’s pithy description of a breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations whose failure surprised no one but himself may go down in history as his most memorable utterance. What is surprising…
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Books Seeking Bernard Malamud on His 100th Birthday
It’s very hard to persuade a friend watching the clock in an office in Midtown Manhattan that at your artist colony in southeastern Wyoming, you — who are eating food made by a country-club chef, sleeping in a free bed, writing in a handsome studio, and taking walks in a landscape of religious beauty —…
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When the Family Doctor Turns Out To Be Josef Mengele
“The German Doctor,” a film that Argentinian filmmaker Lucia Puenzo adapted from her novel “Wakolda,” begins with a chance meeting: A mysterious, good-looking doctor and a teenager at a service station. Soon, the doctor is asking for directions, following her family through winding Patagonia roads to a beautiful vacation spot. While the doctor is based…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Cuomo blames Mamdani’s young, Jewish and pro-Palestinian voters for his primary loss
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Fast Forward Elon Musk wants your kids to use his chatbot. The same one that praised Hitler.
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Fast Forward Nation’s largest teachers union rejects move to cut ties with ADL
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Culture In this Holocaust story, there are few words, no swastikas, no yellow stars — just movement, passion and empathy
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