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
-
‘Yip’ Harburg’s All-American Lyrics Came With a Heaping Helping of Yiddishkeit
Yip Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist By Harriet Hyman Alonso Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 332 pages, $28.95 The tragic “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” the idealistic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and the raucous “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” were all co-written by the same American Jewish lyricist, E. Y. Harburg (1896–1981), and all owe…
-
Books American Jewry’s Top 100 List
M. M. Silver is a modern Jewish history scholar at Max Stern College of Emek Yezreel in Israel. His newest book, “Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America: A Biography,” is now available. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s…
-
How James Lasdun Found Himself Victimized by Anti-Semitic Cyber-Stalker
Victims of stalking are typically counseled to ignore their tormentors. Just as trying to banish an unwanted thought invariably lodges that thought in the mind, asking a stalker to stop often yields the counter effect — a fresh round of emails, phone calls, visits or letters. To the stalker, the contact is proof that her…
The Latest
-
Prisoner X and the Letter of Mystery
By now, unless you’re the type that refuses to follow the news (not that I blame you, but in that case, why are you reading this newspaper?), you know who “Prisoner X” is. Called “Mr. X” by the Israeli news service Ynet, which originally broke the story of his suicide in a high-security Israeli prison…
-
Bertrand Russell Challenges Nikita Khrushchev on Anti-Semitism
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 illuminating, edifying and sometimes wacky clippings from the Jewish past. 100 Years Ago 1913 As the Yiddish theater strike on Manhattan’s Lower East Side…
-
Rabbi Rules Water Is Non-Kosher
More stories here… Federal regulations that safeguard the hydration of citizens have fallen afoul of the church state divide when, citing concerns about water-borne micro-organisms in potable water supplies, Rabbi Detrop of the Orthodox Onion declared water nonkosher. “We have been able to make limited supplies of OO koshered water available at $5 a bottle,”…
-
God Shifts to Pay-Per-Miracle Service
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… Taking a cue from on-demand digital streaming services like Hulu and Spotify, God announced today that He would no longer be everywhere all the time, and would focus on a pay-per-miracle model for distributing His compassion. “In today’s crowded religious landscape, it…
-
Books Author Blog: Places Never Seen
Earlier this week, Jay Neugeboren wrote about the title story of his third collection and the art of silence. His 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: My most recently published novel, “The…
-
Wanted: Leader for Major World Religion
WANTED: LEADER FOR MAJOR WORLD RELIGION Preferred qualifications: Partially or fully abnegated selfhood. Personal connection with the godhead. Experience running large organizations. Pleasant manner. Required qualifications: Must not have history of sexually or physically abusing children, women or congregants. Must not have history of covering up other leaders’ sexual or physical abuse of children, women…
-
Jewish Journalism Is Still Hot!
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… A Backward spinoff — the amusingly named “Forward” — was at the center of a campaign to make celebrities sexy again. “We hope some of that newspaper stardust will rub off on us dowdy singers,” said Katy Perry, who sings Yiddish songs…
-
Über Buber
More stories here… Some of the Superhumanistic Jews who made the Backward possible in 5773 were Mr. Dr. Simon Shaw, Karen “K-Lo” Loew, Jason “Jar-El” Reich, “Demographic” Rob Kutner, Jonathan “JZ” Zacks, Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, Gail “Gail” Lerner, Larry Cohler-Esses (leader of the Cohler-Essenes), “Sir” Paul Berger, Prof. Dr. Eddy Portnoy and the Rt….
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
- 2
Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
- 3
Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
- 4
Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion What Democrats fighting Trump should learn from Germany’s failure to stop Hitler
-
Fast Forward 31st anniversary of AMIA bombing marked by ceremonies in Argentina, Israel and, for the first time, Congress
-
Fast Forward Mike Huckabee to Israel: End hostile treatment of Christian allies
-
Fast Forward Connie Francis, 20th-century star turned TikTok sensation, recorded an album of Jewish songs in 1960
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
