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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Gimme Some Old Time Gossip
Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit By Joseph Epstein Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 256 pages, $25 The only book I would rather review than a treatise on gossip is a history of pornography: Both promise all the thrill of the source material with only half the need to smuggle the book inside a magazine on the subway. Or…
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Discovering Israel’s Not-So-Old History
When American Jews think of the Israeli landscape, what come to mind are ancient ruins, contemporary settlement blocs and walls of all sorts. But as I recently discovered on a whirlwind trip, the situation on the ground is far more complex than that. Buildings whose history stretches back to pre-state days are being given a…
The Latest
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‘Minus 16’ Is Plus for Ailey
‘Don’t make it look pretty,” Danielle Agami said as she directed the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during a recent rehearsal. “It’s not about the construction of beauty, it’s about the sensation. Every gesture, posture, and breath is beautiful. Just let your body be.” Agami, a former member of Batsheva Dance Company, spent November at…
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Books Historical Figure Fixation
Lavie Tidhar’s most recent novel is “Osama” (PS Publishing). His blog posts are being featured this week 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 might be obsessed with historical figures. Maybe it’s a Jewish thing. But…
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A Sneak Preview of Itzhak Perlman
Itzhak spoke to Yitzchok in Hebrew. Hankus spoke to Yitzchok in Yiddish. The conductor made puns in English with a heavy accent that is Australian and South African. And this all happened in the studio where Bruce Springsteen recorded “Born To Run” and Madonna laid down her vocal tracks for “Like a Virgin.” We’re talking,…
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Cheers! We’re Not Poisoned — Or Are We?
Two interesting comments have come from readers about [my November 25 column][1] on the Jewish toast “l’chaim,” which I traced back to a medieval custom, still practiced by Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews, that is connected to the Kiddush, the traditional Sabbath and holiday blessing over wine. The first of these, from Harold Zvi Slutzkin…
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To Understand and Equate, Passionately
It says something about the fraught history of North African Jewry that one of its most vivid authors of today was inspired to write a reminiscence of her youth not by dipping a Proustian madeleine into her tea, but by almost being crushed by a train. Colette Fellous, who was born in Tunis in 1950…
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Looking Back: December 16, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward Haym Soloveitchik, otherwise known as the Brisker Rov, is one of the best-known scholars among contemporary rabbis. Considered one of Jewish law’s top authorities, people turn to him from all over the world with their legal queries. For the young generation, Soloveitchik is regarded as a fanatic who is…
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Books Jews, Non-Jews, and Being Losers Together
Earlier this week, Matthue Roth blogged about publishing a real life old-fashioned book and getting up early. His blog posts are being featured this week 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: Yesterday, I put out a…
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Talented Life of Diane Arbus Reconsidered
An Emergency in Slow Motion: The Inner Life of Diane Arbus By William Todd Schultz Bloomsbury, 256 pages, $25 Although William Todd Schultz reminds his readers that photographer Diane Arbus remains something of a mystery, he promises that his new psychobiography, “An Emergency in Slow Motion,” will provide the needed password. It will unlock secrets….
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Majdanek Survivors Return To Dig Up Treasures
‘Buried Prayers,” directed by Steven Meyer, stretches the definitions of Holocaust-related cinema by examining not only what happened on the unholy ground of the World War II death camp Majdanek, but also what happened underneath it. In the spring of 1943, survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto were sent to Majdanek just outside Lublin, Poland, and…
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Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
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Fast Forward A week after Boulder attack, attendance at Run for Their Lives spikes from dozens to hundreds
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Fast Forward How many American Jews are there? A global study of world religions offers a new estimate
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Film & TV In unheard recordings, Andy Kaufman emerges — a kinder, gentler soul than you may expect, or hope to see
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