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
-
Riots Break Out After Bank Loses Money
1914 • 100 years ago The Bank With No Money A wild riot took place last week on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in front of Yarmulovsky’s Bank on East Broadway and Essex Street, after depositors discovered that the bank had no money for them. The police made multiple arrests after rioters attempted to break down…
-
Music Ladies Night With Bulletproof Stockings
An all-female, all-Hasidic rock band? Alright! Throw in an all-women crowd, and you’ve got the Bulletproof Stockings show which took place at Arlene’s Grocery last night. After several unsuccessful attempts, in which venues have backed out last minute, Bulletproof Stockings finally managed to showcase their music and let their hair down (figuratively, as all band…
-
The Forverts Calls For Demonstration by New York City Socialists
1914 • 100 years ago Forverts Calls For Demonstration More than 10,000 demonstrators showed up to protest the tyranny of capitalism that is responsible for a blood-drenched war. They were prodded, in part, by an editorial in the Forverts requesting the presence of all socialists to attend a protest meeting in New York City’s Union…
The Latest
-
How Military Photos Testify to Our Place — in World War II and Gaza
I’ve been thinking a lot about photographs lately. No, not selfies, but the black-and-white images of people, usually of family members, that stand stiffly at attention on a mantelpiece or on a side table in the living room. Neatly contained in a frame fashioned out of wood or metal, these pictures infuse domestic space with…
-
Music Hasidic Rock Band Takes to Stage — No Men Allowed
Bulletproof Stockings // Facebook It isn’t everyday that Arlene’s Grocery hosts a show for women only. But that’s what will happen Thursday night when the all-female Hasidic rock band Bulletproof Stockings takes the stage at the iconic Lower East Side venue. The modesty prohibition of kol isha states that Hasidic women cannot sing in front…
-
Portland’s Jews Celebrate Century of Sephardic Heritage
They came from a collapsing Ottoman Empire, landed in New York and were sped on their way by Jewish agencies to the verdant Pacific Northwest. They arrived in Portland and built a small community that in many ways replicated the village and small city life they abandoned along the shores of the sun-kissed Mediterranean. These…
-
Feeling at Home on the Range in Jewish Wyoming
The fences bordering ranches in Laramie, Wyoming are always dotted with tumbleweed, that pesky, thorny, seemingly dead bush that blows around the prairie, getting caught on anything in its way. It is an iconic symbol of the American West, but it is actually an imported species from Eurasia, named Russian thistle. Like the tumbleweed, I,…
-
‘Magic in the Moonlight’ Isn’t That Bad and Neither Is Woody Allen
Back in February, my colleague Ezra Glinter said that because of the allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against Woody Allen, Ezra felt “tainted” writing about him, and warned that “when the next Woody Allen movie hits theaters,” he would not be able to separate the man from his art. Alas, Ezra’s savaging of Allen’s new…
-
A Lizard’s Eye View of the Conflict in Israel
My three sons were looking for lizards when the first sirens blared. Overlooking the sea, Independence Park in Tel Aviv is the perfect place to find lizards, if you can force yourself to be still enough to evade their detection. To say the sirens broke the silence is an understatement. You don’t have to be…
-
All God’s Griffins Got Wings at Cleveland Synagogue
The ark at Cleveland’s Orthodox Green Road Synagogue looms on an intimidating platform above the congregation. Alternating tan and umber rays — evocative of the divine lights that emanate from the sun in ancient Egyptian art and of St. Francis’s stigmata in Christian paintings — culminate in diamond-shaped niches above the chairs reserved for synagogue…
-
Books Heart as Tender as Brisket
A version of this story first appeared on Women’s Voices for Change. The best comic novel I’ve read this year wasn’t published by Random House or Penguin. It was self-published by Philadelphia writer Stacia Friedman. The title? “Tender is the Brisket.” Does the book live up to the comic promise of that title? Absolutely. Ruth…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Fast Forward First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 3
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 4
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward In Reykjavik, Hanukkah offers a chance for Iceland’s tiny, isolated Jewish community to come together
-
Opinion When my children decorate for Hanukkah, I don’t just see pride. I see pluralism in action.
-
Fast Forward ‘The most Australian name’: Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach attack, embodies a nation’s grief
-
Fast Forward A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel advocate in LGBTQ spaces, is shutting down
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
