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
-
Books
Q&A: Michael Feinstein on the Gershwins and ‘Porgy’
When Michael Feinstein was in his 20s, he had the good fortune to work as an assistant and archivist for the great Ira Gershwin, who, with his brother George, wrote some of the greatest and most beloved songs in American history. Now a beloved singer in his own right, Feinstein spoke with the Forward about…
-
Books Rachel Tzvia Back’s Verse Confronts Devastating Loss
A Messenger Comes By Rachel Tzvia Back Singing Horse Press, 110 Pages, $15 Mourning propels us. We are, none of us, immune. It is the first thing children fear: loss — of a parent, a friend, a sibling, a grandparent — and the first lie we tell them, or half-truth we impart, as parents, promising,…
-
Books Némirovsky’s ‘Wine of Solitude’ Confirms Her Place
The Wine of Solitude By Irène Némirovsky Vintage, 256 pages. $15 When we first meet Hélène Karol, she is an 8-year-old girl growing up in Ukraine. She dislikes, and is disliked by, her mother, an exceedingly unhappy member of the morally and financially bankrupt bourgeoisie. Hélène loves and admires her father, who doesn’t care much…
The Latest
-
Books Michael Feinstein Strikes Up The Bland
The Gershwins and Me By Michael Feinstein Simon & Schuster, 320 pages, $45 George Gershwin is widely, and rightly, regarded as a quintessentially American character. This isn’t merely because of the way his music sounds; while the music he wrote is unmistakably American, the same can be said for any number of other American composers…
-
Books A.M. Homes’ Novel Addresses ’70s Childhood
When A.M. Homes and I sat down to lunch at Buvette, a packed cafe on Grove Street near her home in New York City’s West Village, to discuss her new novel, “May We Be Forgiven,” she referred to it as “a midlife coming-of-age novel.” That may make her book sound sweet or languorous, but it…
-
Books Hans Keilson’s First Novel Depicts Life Before Nazis
Life Goes On By Hans Keilson Translated by Damion Searls Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 272 pages, $15 Two years ago, when Farrar, Straus and Giroux released translations of his novels “The Death of the Adversary” and “Comedy in a Minor Key,” centenarian Hans Keilson told Steven Erlanger of The New York Times that he would…
-
Books Author Blog: Different, but Special
Jami Attenberg’s most recent novel, “The Middlesteins,” is now available. Her other books include: “Instant Love,” “The Kept Man” and “The Melting Season.” 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: I have…
-
Debunking Myth of the Unathletic Jew
I would not say I’ve become jaded, but I thought I had heard enough (and written enough) about Sandy Koufax not pitching on Yom Kippur. I knew the stories about Hank Greenberg and Al Rosen and those other outstanding Jewish ballplayers. And then one day, in the mail recently, I got a 24-page publication called…
-
Books Don’t Know Much About Semitism
I came from such an assimilated family that our clam chowder was Campbell’s. Nevertheless, I was raised with certain traditions. There was the “No Slacks on Yom Kippur” rule and the “Seder at Aunt Sara and Uncle George’s.” If my family had settled in Dallas or Indianapolis, we might have easily melded into America, but…
-
Books Teenage Hero Is a Distinctly West Coast Jew
Since you Left Me By Allen Zadoff Egmont USA, 320 pages, $16 Has any Jewish teenager in recent American literature felt as much antipathy toward attending Hebrew school as Sanskrit Aaron Zuckerman? The 17-year-old narrator of Allen Zadoff’s new bildungsroman, “Since You Left Me,” has just cause, though. First, he’s only attending “B-Jew” (the nickname…
-
To Err is Human, To Forgive Bovine
Writing about the Spanish economic situation in the New York Times on October 4, columnist Roger Cohen, in an op-ed entitled “In the Time of the Skinny Cows,” remarked: “In Spain, the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy, the good times are those of ‘vacas gordas,’ or fat cows, and the lean years those of ‘vacas flacas,’…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion Mamdani has made ample efforts for Jews. How come no one is telling that story?
- 2
News Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with binational state, poll finds
- 3
Film & TV Woody Allen’s biggest fans were easy marks for a fake monologue about antisemitism
- 4
News Floyd Mayweather showered cash on Jewish causes — and now he’s suing their ‘Robin Hood’ alleging $175 million got diverted
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani missed the Israel Day Parade. Many who went didn’t miss him.
-
Fast Forward NY Democratic stalwarts show support for Israel even as Mamdani skips parade
-
Fast Forward For the first time, a kosher restaurant has won a Michelin star
-
Fast Forward London police are ‘reviewing’ video of Helen Mirren being called ‘an evil Zionist’