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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The Last Living Yiddish Speaker in Lviv
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. During an emotional scene in the new documentary film “Boris Dorfman: A Mentsh,” the 90-year-old Dorfman stands in a forest near Rudno, Ukraine, at the spot where the Germans murdered the last surviving Jews from the Lviv ghetto in June of 1943. Near a memorial-marker that he…
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Why You Shouldn’t Call Mel Bochner a Lox Jock
From King Solomon to Ludwig Wittgenstein — with the notable exception of Moses — Jews have always been people of words. It seems appropriate, therefore, that the artist Mel Bochner’s new exhibition at the Jewish Museum, a retrospective of decades’ worth of his work and his first major museum show in New York City, is…
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There’s Something Rotten in Akko (and It’s Not the Falafel)
Akko’s Old City, many people told me, is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, but I never found the time to go there. At least not until today, when I decided that it’s time I finally heed their advice. I don’t know anybody in Akko — Old City or New — which…
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Spitting and Other Methods of Warding Off Canaries, Jinxes and Evil Eyes
Forward reader Herb Hoffman writes: “I was raised in Brooklyn with the knowledge that spitting three times (or at least making a ritualized spitting movement or sound, which I’ve always rendered as ‘ptu, ptu, ptu’) is an effective way of warding off a kinehore — or ‘canary’ in my native Yinglish. My mother especially used…
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Even Trees Can Be Political
The anonymous narrator of Robert Frost’s 1914 poem “Mending Wall” wonders why his neighbor insists upon having an artificial barrier between their properties. “He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines,” he says. But all his neighbor does is echo,…
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Books Canadian Jewish Book Awards Present Diverse Honor Roll
A chronicle of Nazi persecution of gay people, a study of Jews and obscenity, and a haunting artistic collaboration are among the wide-ranging winners of this year’s Canadian Jewish Book Awards. After an announcement last week, the awards will be presented at a May 27 ceremony in Toronto. With its other accolades for a Holocaust…
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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….
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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