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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Film & TV In ‘The Rehearsal’ season 2, is Nathan Fielder serious?
The comedian is out to solve an epidemic of airplane crashes — will the world listen?
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Looking Back: October 21
100 Years Ago in the Forward In a heartbreaking meeting of relatives of the 145 victims of the Triangle Waist Company fire, hundreds protested the fact that no one has been brought to justice for the crimes of negligence that caused the fire and the deaths of all the shop workers. As sobs were heard…
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A New Kittel To Provide Hope in the New Year
My childhood memories of this festive season are mixed with being ridiculously inappropriately dressed for the weather. Insisting that I wore my new winter clothes, I would swelter in the heat of an Indian summer. But having new clothes was, and still is, a part of Yom Tov. Rosh Hashana/Sukkot are conveniently placed in the…
The Latest
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New ‘Maus’ Is Virtual Memoir of Father
Metamaus, A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus By Art Spiegelman Pantheon, 300 pages, $35 Sitting forlornly on my bookshelf is a dusty, book-shaped box containing an antiquated item known as a CD- ROM. Titled, “Maus,” it was produced in 1992 and epitomized the cutting edge of hypertext at that time. Containing digitized versions of…
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Books Sukkot and Social Justice
Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the author of “Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community.” Her 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: My initial…
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American Jews and Israel: What’s the Confusion?
That there has been a realignment of American Jewish attitudes toward Israel is by now apparent and heavily commented on. In some quarters, this has been seen as an earth-shattering, Judaism-betraying paroxysm of collective self-hatred. Yet in fact it is entirely logical. For years, Jewish moderates like me have held a curious combination of views:…
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‘Bored To Death’ Brings Brooklyn to TV
One of the things I love about New York is the way the culture constantly beams my surroundings back to me. It gives life a different feel than it has in other places; the extra layer of reality bestowed by art seems to rub off a little bit when it’s my reality also. Seeing iconic…
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West Side Story, With a Shofar Blast
Why does it begin with a shofar call? Once you compare the famous, startling first three notes of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” score with a real shofar sounding “Tekiah g’dolah,” as I did in 1996 to demonstrate this point on WNYC, the resemblance is undeniable. Once you notice it, this shofar theme is woven…
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Books Werner Sombart: Portrait of an Anti-Semite
Earlier this week, Ned Beauman wrote about Oscar Panizza and Henry Ford. His debut novel, “Boxer, Beetle” (Bloomsbury), is now available. His 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: Can an…
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Tough to Put the Kibosh on Kol Nidre
If American Jewish popular culture is any indication, Kol Nidre is the one prayer American Jews happen to know well. Over the years, they’ve encountered it on long-playing records, like those produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the 1920s, and at the movies, where the cinematic plot hinged on whether the not-so-loyal son…
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Books Q&A: Poet Elinor Nauen on Writing Ottava Rima for Derek Jeter
Elinor Nauen is Manhattan’s unofficial poet laureate of cars and baseball. Her newest book, “So Late Into the Night,” is a rollicking road trip on the model of Byron’s “Don Juan,” with over 600 stanzas of ottava rima about Derek Jeter (her non-Platonic obsession), road trips, her husband, morning minyan and herself. Nauen chatted with…
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Comedy About Cancer? ’50/50′ Pulls It Off
I was initially hesitant to see “50/50,” the new Seth Rogen “cancer comedy.” Cancer movies always seem to go in one of two directions — heroism or epiphany. Either the main character’s illness causes a life-altering revelation (“Stepmom”), or a terminally ill character transforms the main character into a better person (“A Walk To Remember”)….
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