Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Books The Jewish Connection to Art
Allison Amend’s most recent novel, “A Nearly Perfect Copy,” is now available. Allison was a finalist for the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her novel “Stations West.” Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information…
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How Three Jewish Boys From Wilmette Became the ‘Brothers Emanuel’
● Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family By Ezekiel Emanuel Random House, 288 pages, $27 As near as I can tell, it was New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller who brought the world’s attention to the phenomenon of the three fabulous Emanuel brothers from Wilmette, Ill. Before Bumiller’s 1997 article, people in medicine…
The Latest
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Grappling With Yiddish Words That Punch Above Their Weight
A reader identified as “JA” wants to know: “Does the English word ‘slug,’ as in to slug someone, come from Yiddish shlogn, to hit? They certainly sound very similar.” My thinking about this went through three stages. Stage 1, my immediate reaction, was that “slug” and shlogn — or shlugn, in the Yiddish some of…
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Snatched From Seders To Wash Streets of Vienna
Forward Looking Back brings you the stories that were making news in the Forward’s Yiddish paper 100, 75, and 50 years ago. Check back each week for a new set of illluminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 Morris Lustig, who was sent to death row at Sing…
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Books ‘Go the F**k to Sleep’: The Movie
First there was the viral leaked PDF. Then there was the book. Then there was the audio book narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. And now there’s the movie. America can’t seem to get enough of Adam Mansbach’s “Go the F**k to Sleep,” the picture book for adults that took the country by storm when it…
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Why Jews Are Among World’s Happiest People
‘Jewish” and “happy” are words not usually found in the same sentence. But now, being Jewish and being happy are, if a bit tenuously, united at The Jewish Museum in “Six Things,” an exhibit that visualizes in sensuous three-dimensional letterforms what Stefan Sagmeister, one of the world’s most influential graphic designers, has learned about happiness….
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Books Author Blog: What Is the Story?
Earlier this week, Jennifer Gilmore wrote about the overlap between her personal concerns and writerly concerns. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: “The Mothers” is the first book I’ve written that…
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Harvey Fierstein Gets ‘Kinky’ and Discusses His Jewish Roots
Harvey Fierstein says he had some reservations about adapting the film “Kinky Boots” into a musical. “To do a drag show doesn’t interest me,” he said. “Been there, done that. A show about shoes doesn’t cry out to me. Also, if something [like the original film] is good, why f–k with it? And a musical…
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Books Rothschild Heiress and ‘Miss Havisham of Bebop’
The name “Rothschild” means different things to different people. In 1902, Sholem Aleichem wrote the monologue “Ven ikh bin Rothschild” (“If I Were a Rothschild”), which would be famously turned into the song “If I Were a Rich Man” by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock for “Fiddler on the Roof.” To Sholem Aleichem and generations…
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Playing Jewish Geography From California to the New York Islands
At one point or another, most of us have undoubtedly played “Jewish Geography.” The Jewish equivalent of “six degrees of separation,” the term refers to the kinship ties and social structures that bind one Jew to another. “Jewish Geography” is how we locate ourselves. It’s our very own GPS. But “Jewish Geography” isn’t just a…
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Books Francesca Segal Wins $100K Rohr Prize
Francesca Segal has won the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her novel “The Innocents,” the Jewish Book Council announced today. The award, worth $100,000, is one of the largest literary prizes in the world and is given for fiction and non-fiction in alternating years. This year’s runner-up, who receives $25,000, is Ben…
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