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
-
Why Bob Dylan’s Interactive Video Is a Sign Of Things To Come
Bob Dylan’s classic hit “Like A Rolling Stone” came out in 1965, but only got a music video in 2013. Israeli director Vania Heymann and interactive video company Interlude created an interactive video for the song (full disclosure: I had a small part in the production of the video). In the video, the viewer is…
-
Adam Levine Is Sexy and Jewish. So What?
Adam Levine, front man of Maroon 5, host of “The Voice,” he of the moves like Mick Jagger, was named People’s Sexiest Man Alive this year. Is this good for the Jews? Who’s asking? For single Jewish men looking to get a date, this is very good news. Jewish men have been in a bit…
-
Books Francesca Segal, Fiction’s Newest Star
Set in one of northwest London’s tight-knit Jewish communities, Francesca Segal’s debut novel “The Innocents” tells a tale of family and love that includes all the ingredients of a widely read story: lust, betrayal, doubt and commitment. Adam and Rachel are in their late 20s and engaged to be married. Then Rachel’s free-spirited and vulnerable…
The Latest
-
How ‘Shalom Aleykhem’ Originated and Why It Doesn’t Appear in the Bible
Samuel Sislen of Washington, D.C., writes: “Jews have traditionally greeted one another ‘Shalom aleykhem’ and responded with the words inverted. Arabic speakers greet each other, ‘Salaam aleykum’ and also respond with the words reversed. And I have been told that some Christian services begin with the leader saying, ‘Peace be unto you,’ and the congregation…
-
History Made and Broke David Laskin’s Family
The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century By David Laskin Viking Adult, 400 pages, $32 David Laskin descends from the most privileged branch of an Eastern European Jewish clan that, like many, splintered into three groups during the convulsions of the last century. Geography turned out to be destiny: The Americans…
-
Army of Jewish Women Nab Tenement Thief Caught in Lower East Side Toilet
1913 •100 years ago An Army of Jewesses A novel type of robbery has been taking place recently in the tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side: A tenant goes to a neighbor for a few minutes, and returns home to find something amiss: Someone has sneaked in and stolen something. A clever type of ruse…
-
How a German Jew Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding Simon & Schuster, 369 Pages, $26 At the end of 2006, journalist Thomas Harding attended the funeral of his great-uncle, Hanns Alexander, in London. After the recital of the Kaddish, two of Hanns’s…
-
Al Goldstein Is Dead — and Our Culture Is a Little Poorer
So Al Goldstein is dead. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about him, but I have to believe that our culture will be poorer without him. Al, if you recall, was the publisher and chief protagonist of the notorious porn magazine Screw. Obscenity isn’t just a description of Screw, it was also the…
-
Provocateur Pianist Journeys From Ukraine to Brooklyn and Back
Stuck in his spartan Brooklyn studio on a warm November day, pianist and composer Vadim Neselovskyi seemed a little restless. He had just returned from a six-city tour of Russia and his native Ukraine — a tour on which he and his musical partner, the noted horn player Arkady Shilkloper, packed houses from Moscow to…
-
How the Other Half of America Still Lives
The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives By Sasha Abramsky Nation Books, $25, 368 pages In 1962, Michael Harrington, a freelance journalist, published a book that hit the American public like a slap in the face. In a prosperous time, “The Other America: Poverty in the United States” described the tens…
-
Do Jewish Photographers See the World Through a Different Lens?
Looking a bit like St. Peter crucified upside down, nine not-yet-plucked chickens dangle from hooks in a storefront window; the alignment of their bound feet evokes hamsas. There’s no warding off the evil eye for these upturned chickens, whose tail feathers are naughtily exposed, or for the two others, which are violently suspended by their…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Exclusive Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you
- 2
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
- 3
Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
- 4
Opinion Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
In Case You Missed It
-
News Ceasefire and political pressure test U.S.-Israel Iran war pact
-
Antisemitism Decoded Why I interviewed Mahmoud Khalil
-
Fast Forward In rallies taking on Israel, a defiant Hasan Piker boosts Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed
-
Opinion The Iran war looks like a failure. Now comes the Trump-Netanyahu spin game
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
