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
Nabokov’s Dystopic ‘Bend Sinister’ Turns 65
It’s hard to imagine Vladimir Nabokov as a commercial failure. Yet that was precisely what happened with his second English-language work, the nightmarish and satirical dystopian novel “Bend Sinister,” which celebrates its 65th anniversary today. Originally titled “The Person from Porlock,” then “Game to Gunm[etal]” and later “Solus Rex,” “Bend Sinister” was Nabokov’s first novel…
-
Copywriters at the Gates
At the onset of the fifth season of the critically beloved AMC ad agency drama “Mad Men,” a new Jewish copywriter, Michael Ginsberg, becomes the bright creative light of the office, while Abe Drexler, a secondary character dating another copywriter, is outed as a member of the tribe by using the word “bracha.” Then the…
-
How To Get a Haircut in Lvov
Herb Hoffman writes: “When as a child I needed a haircut — desperately, according to my mother — she would say, ‘Azoy a shmenge oyf den kopp, a mameshe choprene.’ This always seemed to me more Polish or German than Yiddish. She herself came from Lvov and knew all three languages. What is the derivation?”…
The Latest
-
Books Author Blog: Jewish People and Books
Earlier this week, Yehuda Kurtzer wrote about a recent Commentary article by Jack Wertheimer and the transmission of memory. 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: Do the Jewish People need more…
-
Unlikely Chronicler of Jewish Neighborhood
The president of the New York Tattoo Society is an unlikely figure to launch what may be the most ambitious publishing venture ever to cover the Jewish Lower East Side. Clayton Patterson, a non-Jew whose long beard could be mistaken for that of a biblical patriarch, is the editor of the three-volume “Jews: A People’s…
-
Books Keret and Englander Nominated for Award
Israeli writer Etgar Keret and American author Nathan Englander have both been shortlisted for the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the biggest prize in the world for a short story collection. Keret was nominated for “Suddenly a Knock on the Door,” and Englander received a nod for “What We Talk About When We…
-
Broadway Empire
Mr. Broadway: The Inside Story of the Shuberts, the Shows, and the Stars By Gerald Schoenfeld Applause, 304 pages, 27.99 In August 2008, my family — parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister — made a pilgrimage to New York City to speak with Gerald Schoenfeld, then chairman of the Shubert Organization, the largest theater group on…
-
Looking Back: June 15, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward After Big Jack Zelig, a gangster from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, survived a recent shooting in a gang war between the Jewish gang headed by “Kid Twist” and the Italian gang led by Jack Sirocco, he took the stand to testify against his assailants. In the wake of the…
-
Books Fan and Critic Both
Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958–2008 By John Leonard Viking Press, 401 pages, $35 In beginning to compose a review of “Reading for My Life,” the latest and possibly final collection of John Leonard’s essays and criticism, one must confront the obvious absurdity of writing a book review of a collection of book reviews. Though…
-
Books Secrets of the Cellar
Hunting Down the Jews: Vichy, the Nazis and Mafia Collaborators in Provence 1942–1944 By Isaac Levendel and Bernard Weisz Enigma Books, 340 pages, $24 In the wine region of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in Provence, Château de la Gardine is an esteemed name, as is that of the proprietor who brought it to prominence, Gaston Brunel. Even today,…
-
Books Caught Between Two Worlds
I Am Forbidden By Anouk Markovits Hogarth, 320 pages, $25 The title of Anouk Markovits’s English-language debut, “I Am Forbidden,” refers both to the tragic climax of the book and to the broader world of this novel, a world defined by forbiddenness. The allure of the forbidden is ever-present in the story, which spans several…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Inside the ancient Christian theology driving modern antisemitism
- 2
News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
- 3
Opinion The moral degradation of Israel’s far right is even worse than you think
- 4
News Mamdani to attend Passover Seder as he navigates ties with Jewish groups amid rising antisemitism
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Oct. 7 changed Howard Jacobson. But his new novel is as defiant as ever.
-
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
-
Fast Forward 3 more men arrested in London arson of ambulances owned by Jewish emergency service
-
Fast Forward Influencer Myron Gaines performs Nazi salute, denies Holocaust death toll at Ohio University event
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
