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
-
The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
After Max Kozloff died at 91, a New York community came together to remember and to mourn
-
Books Casting Off
Stuart Nadler’s first book, “The Book of Life,” 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: For me, the year has always begun in September. I grew up…
-
Happy Rosh Hashanah to All, No Matter What the Gender
‘I’m done with all my shanot tovot,” an Israeli friend said to me a while ago, meaning that she had finished sending out shana tova cards to all the people on her list. How did I know that she was talking about greeting cards and not tragically telling me, “I’m done with all my good…
The Latest
-
Books Lost and Found in Brooklyn
Earlier this week, Lucette Lagnado wrote about an arrogant revolution and about mourning her Arab Spring. 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: This past weekend I was lost —…
-
Books Eighteen Solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
How many ways are there to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Given that none so far have definitively worked, the number doesn’t seem high. But in a new anthology, “United States of Palestine — Israel” (Sternberg Press, 2011) a group of Israeli, Palestinian and European left-wing writers and artists present no less than 18 solutions to…
-
Who are the Palestinians?
The Forgotten Palestinians By Ilan Pappé Yale University Press, 336 pages, $30 Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza By Sara Roy Princeton University Press, 319 pages, $35 In Your Eyes a Sandstorm: Ways of Being Palestinian By Arthur Neslen University of California Press, 328 pages, $34.95 ‘I can’t believe Bibi [Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu],…
-
Forgotten Jewish Dada-ists Get Their Due
The killing fields of World War I produced a bonfire of certainties: Old ways of seeing and believing were twisted and shattered; art, architecture, book-cover designs, music, photography, politics and the very way we dressed and lived were all turned on their heads. Being “avant-garde” was exhilarating. “Dada” was one of the most radical of…
-
Looking Back: September 30
100 Years Ago in the Forward Three Jews are about to go on trial on charges of espionage: brothers Shishl and Yosl Weissman, and their cousin, Wolf Steinberg, who runs a saloon not far from the Russian border. They were also part of an illegal immigration ring. Because the Russian border guardpost could be seen…
-
Books Art Spiegelman: ‘Why Comics? Why Mice? Why the Holocaust?’
The book trailer is out for Art Spiegelman’s much-anticipated “MetaMaus,” a look at the creation of his iconic “Maus” graphic novel, now celebrating its 25th anniversary. In the video Spiegelman says that “Maus” is more about the relationship between a father and son “trying to understand each other” than it is about the Holocaust. In…
-
Nancy Miller Hunts for Roots on Three Continents
What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past By Nancy K. Miller University of Nebraska Press, 248 pages, $24.95 Although Nancy Miller calls this book a memoir, it is in many ways more a family detective story, tracking a set of clues back into the past and across the globe. Or, perhaps better, it exemplifies…
-
Books An Arrogant Revolution
Lucette Lagnado’s most recent book, “The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn,” is now available. Lucette won the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her memoir “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World.” Her posts…
-
The Kittel as a Garment of Majestic Leadership
This kittel explores leadership. Specifically, the responsiblity of leading, and the leaders’ complex relationships to followers and to themselves. On Rosh Hashana our prayer leaders stand before God and together we crown God as King. There are three different leadership archetypes in the Tanach: kings, prophets and priests. It is interesting to note that clothing…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Opinion Anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling an alarmingly powerful new wave of antisemitism on the right
- 3
Opinion How anti-Israel rhetoric led to the killing of two in Washington, D.C.
- 4
Fast Forward Trump just granted asylum to a man who posted Jews are ‘dangerous’
In Case You Missed It
-
News Manifesto posted on social media account tied to suspected Jewish museum shooter, who called to ‘bring the war home’
-
Fast Forward Israel to increase security at its embassies around the world following DC shooting
-
Opinion How anti-Israel rhetoric led to the killing of two in Washington, D.C.
-
Fast Forward Capital Jewish Museum shooting suspect killed two ‘for Gaza.’ His victims were peace advocates.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
