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
-
I have seen the future of America — in a pastrami sandwich in Queens
San Wei, which serves pastrami sandwiches along with churros and biang biang noodles, represents an immigrant's fulfillment of the American dream
-
Books What’s in a Name?
On Monday, Wayne Hoffman wrote about a funny thing. 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: When it comes to a novel, what’s in a name? There are often dozens…
-
Rembrandt Chose Jewish Models To Depict a More Realistic Jesus
Sometime in the mid-to-late 1640s or early 1650s, a young Jewish man — probably of Spanish-Portuguese descent — seems to have taken what would likely have been a short walk from his home in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter to Jodenbreestraat (“Jewish Broad Street”) 4, where Rembrandt van Rijn lived. Inside the three-story home, which Rembrandt purchased…
The Latest
-
Books A Funny Thing Happened — True Story!
Wayne Hoffman‘s most recent book, “Sweet Like Sugar,” is now available. Hoffman is the managing director of special projects at Nextbook. 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: My mother…
-
Warts and All, Wendy Wasserstein Had Love to Spare
Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein By Julie Salamon The Penguin Press, 460 pages, $29.95 ‘Uncommon Women and Others” was Wendy Wasserstein’s first major play. And Julie Salamon’s well-researched, engrossing new biography, “Wendy and the Lost Boys,” makes it clear that Wasserstein was no commonplace woman herself. This revealing and…
-
Books Pro-Israel? Anti-Israel? No, Just Israel
Earlier this week, Darin Strauss wrote about wrestling with faith and about what we believe. 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: Last week, the American Jewish Committee renounced a…
-
Hollywood Fumbles Award-Winning Mossad Thriller ‘The Debt’
What happens when you take an Israeli spy thriller and pump it up with high-budget steroids for a Hollywood remake? That is the question posed by “The Debt,” in which actors feign Israeli accents with varying degrees of success and attempt to tell a story that, while visceral and heartfelt in the Hebrew version, turns…
-
Modern Orthodoxy’s Human Pillar
Rabbi in the New World: The Influence of Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik on Culture, Education and Jewish Thought Edited by Avinoam Rosenak and Naftali Rothenberg The Hebrew University Magnes Press Ltd., 556 pages, $35 No other major movement in American Jewish life has been as dependent on one person as Modern Orthodoxy was on Rabbi Joseph…
-
September 2, 2011
There has always been a strong connection between Jews and baseball. In this excerpted editorial from August 6, 1903, Forverts Editor Ab Cahan offers some advice on the subject to a confounded father. A father writes to ask advice about baseball. He thinks that baseball is a foolish and wild game. But his boy, who…
-
Books What We Believe
On Monday, Darin Strauss wrote about wrestling with faith. 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: I’ve done an informal poll — I admit, it’s very informal — among Jews…
-
After Drama With Wiesel, ‘Madoff’ Opens on Stage
Two years down the pike, much of the Sturm und Drang surrounding Bernard Madoff and his elaborate Ponzi scheme has become more nuanced. Nowadays, Madoff’s behavior does more than just provoke shock and indignation; it raises questions about Jewishness, human dignity and, above all, morality. These questions are embodied by the situation of Nobel Laureate…
-
Notorious Anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Jews Who Read Him
Fifty years after his death on July 1, 1961, French modernist author and ferocious anti-Semite Louis-Ferdinand Céline is still causing controversy. Last January, an attempt by France’s Ministry of Culture to “celebrate” Céline on this anniversary ran aground after noted Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld pointed out that Céline was not merely the author of such…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Fast Forward Columbia staff receive texts asking if they’re Jewish, as government hunts antisemitic harassment on campus
In Case You Missed It
-
News These are the most influential Jews in Trump’s first 100 days
-
Fast Forward Nike apologizes for marathon ad using the Holocaust phrase ‘Never Again’
-
Opinion I wrote the book on Hitler’s first 100 days. Here’s how Trump’s compare
-
Fast Forward Ohio Applebee’s defaced with antisemitic graffiti reading ‘Jews work here’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
