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
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
The Latest
-
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…
-
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….
-
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…
-
Books Writers Should Get Up Early
Yesterday, Matthue Roth blogged about publishing a real life old-fashioned book. 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: As a glutton for torture (and as a recent parent, which…
-
Puppet Golem Strikes Again
In the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s production of “Golem,” the people are puppets (except for a ghost), and the man of clay is danced by a human being (Steven Ryan). And that’s how it should be, for although he doesn’t speak, Golem is a stand-in for man. He’s a creature who didn’t ask to be born,…
-
Vayishlach — Jacob Sent
Genesis 32:4–36:42 Jacob and What Isn’t Accomplished by Force As we’ve noted, more than half the weekly portions in the Book of Genesis deal with Jacob, his personal history and his difficult family. It’s no surprise, then, that his character and profile are depicted in much finer detail in the Torah than any of his…
-
YidLit: Admiel Kosman
Sitting down with Israeli poet Admiel Kosman and his translator Lisa Katz (who is a poet in her own right) in the Forward’s podcast studio felt less like a formal interview than a conversation in a dimly lit cafe, extending for hours into the night. And it likely would have extended — if the producer…
-
Books How a Holocaust Survivor Escaped Into Comics
Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer By Trina Robbins, Illustrated by Anne Timmons and Mo Oh Graphic Universe, 96pp., $7.95 This is quite a remarkable little book, by quite an artist-writer duo, on quite a subject. Miriam Katin, Holocaust survivor and comic artist herself, reviewed “Lily Renee, Escape Artist: From…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Charlie Kirk kept a ‘Jewish Sabbath.’ What did he mean by that?
- 2
Antisemitism Decoded Israel is being blamed for Charlie Kirk’s death. Here’s what that conspiracy theory says about the far right’s divide
- 3
Fast Forward ‘Murdered for speaking truth’: Netanyahu and US Jewish leaders mourn Charlie Kirk
- 4
News Who was Horst Wessel, and why are people comparing Charlie Kirk to him?
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward In Israel, public tributes to Charlie Kirk include a street naming, a mural and a missile in Gaza
-
Opinion Amid terror in Jerusalem, a cab driver’s brave gesture showcased the Israel I’ve always loved
-
Looking Forward Everyone thought I was crazy for majoring in religious studies. Here’s why it matters now more than ever.
-
Culture Charlie Kirk kept a ‘Jewish Sabbath.’ What did he mean by that?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
