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
Dealing With the Side Effects of Fiction
Happy Mutant Baby Pills By Jerry Stahl Harper Perennial, 272 pages, $14.99 The narrator of Jerry Stahl’s new novel “Happy Mutant Baby Pills,” has a serious case of unrest. Lloyd earns his living writing pharmaceutical copy — specifically, disclaimers for the side effects of various drugs. He’s also got a fairly severe heroin habit, and…
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Q&A: Randy Goldberg of Bombas Socks
— After successfully raising $140,000 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, Bombas Socks shipped the first of their product to customers. Bombas, the Warby Parker or TOMS Shoes of socks, is based on a simple idea: one pair purchased equals one pair donated. In this case, Bombas donates to homeless shelters that are in massive need…
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Opera About Holocaust Survivor Premieres for 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
‘I will protect you,” a father sings in the opera “Lost Childhood” to comfort his 9-year-old son, Julek The tragic irony is that shortly thereafter, the father, emblematic of so many Jewish men, will be marched out of his Lvov, Poland, home and murdered by the Nazis. Young Julek, now Yehuda Nir, is a retired…
The Latest
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Ex-Hasidic Woman Marks Five Years Since She Shaved Her Head
I remember the first time I felt the cold, prickly air on my newly shaved head. I remember looking in the mirror. I remember staring at the pile of auburn hair in the vanity sink of the cozy basement apartment I now shared with my husband of less than a day. I remember my mother…
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Sacred and Profane History of Cherished Jewish Number 18
For Jews the world over, the number 18 has long enjoyed a special status. In Jewish liturgy, the prayer known as the Amidah is also called the “Shmoneh Esreh” (“the 18”), referring to the number of separate blessings that originally comprised the prayer. In the Jewish numerological tradition of gematria, the number 18 has long…
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Ruth Messinger and Marilyn Sneiderman Are Odd Couple of Jewish Social Justice
One or more nights a week, a lofty-ceilinged prewar apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan becomes an unexpected nexus of feminist Jewish social justice power. That’s what happens when the heads of two of the country’s major Jewish philanthropic organizations — Ruth Messinger, president and CEO of American Jewish World Service and Marilyn…
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Putting Florence’s Jewish History Into the Spotlight
If you look out over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, high above the Arno, two domes catch your eye. One is Filipo Brunelleschi’s masterpiece, the immense ribbed dome of the Duomo. The other, off to the right, is much smaller but in its way also distinctive: It is the tall, bright green copper dome of the…
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Millennial Giving Gets Jumpstart in Unexpected Way
At 35, Kari Dunn Saratovsky is no longer a millennial by the strict definition. But she has a keen eye for understanding how the 18-30 year old crowd has rethought, retooled and redefined giving. “I want to focus the conversation away from who the millennials are to why they matter and how they are having…
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Neil Blumenthal Is Behind Each Pair of Distributed Warby Parker Glasses
If you’re one of the 150 million Americans who wear some sort of corrective eyewear, you already know an unfortunate truth about shopping for specs: Glasses, particularly fashionable ones, don’t usually come cheap. Click for more Giving stories Frustration with the traditional glasses industry’s byzantine business plan led a band of four former business students…
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Unpacking Why and How People Donate
We give money to causes that touch us personally — our alma maters, synagogues, the hospitals where we receive lifesaving care. As personal giving is a realm governed by sentiment and emotional attachment, the origins of why we donate may seem unpredictable or irrational. Enter Uri Gneezy, a behavioral economist who uncovered the patterns of…
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Honest Tea’s Mission To Sell Less-Sugary Beverages Includes Philanthropy
It all started with a jog. On a business trip to New York in 1997, Seth Goldman went for a run in Central Park. Afterwards, he couldn’t find a drink to quench his thirst. Everything on store shelves was either too sweet or loaded with artificial ingredients. Click for more Giving stories So it got…
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News AIPAC is funneling pro-Israel money to candidates and covering its tracks