For 125 years, the Forward has delivered accurate, timely and nuanced news to American Jews. From breaking news to in-depth investigations, our reporting team covers the people, institutions and issues that define the many ways to be Jewish in the…
News
-
Happy Birthday, Dear Dictionary
A student of Yiddish in Tokyo, a Yiddish songwriter in Greenwich Village and a chasidic newspaper writer in Boro Park all have one book in common — Uriel Weinreich’s “Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish-English Dictionary,” which celebrates its 35th birthday this month. Its story starts with a question: What makes a minority language — a language that’s…
-
Third Trial In ’91 Riot Shows Race Still Divides
An air of frustration filled Courtroom 6 during jury selection in the Brooklyn federal courthouse last week when Juror 46 insisted that despite her own biases she could be fair in the racially charged trial of Lemrick Nelson Jr. When Judge Frederic Block admitted her to a pool of jury finalists, frustration boiled over into…
-
Horizons Separating the Spiritual and Profane
On May 4, the painter and sculptor Tobi Kahn will once again offer audiences a sacred space when an exhibition of more than 100 paintings from his “Sky and Water” series opens at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, N.Y. Since his inclusion in the 1985 Guggenheim Museum’s national exhibition “New Horizons in American…
The Latest
-
U.S. Probe Sees Terror Networks Sharing Men, Cash in Global Trail
American authorities are investigating a suspicious money trail that leads from the jungles of South America to the suburbs of Dallas and may shed light on the interlocking finances of some key terrorist networks, including Hamas and Al Qaeda. Federal and Texas state investigators are seeking clues to the origin and destination of millions of…
-
The Terrible Beauty of Nazi Aesthetics
Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics By Frederic Spotts Overlook, 456 pages, $37.50. —– Something in the study of Adolf Hitler repels us. Perhaps it is our own traditional reflex to blot out the memory of our enemies (or to remember them as blotted out, as we do Haman and Amalek) or just the queasy…
-
Intentions Unclear, Sharon Remains Sphinx of Jerusalem
JERUSALEM — Does he or doesn’t he? This is the question asked most often these days about Prime Minister Sharon. Does the Israeli leader seriously intend to push the peace process forward, as he professes with growing vigor, or is he just playing for time, waiting for an opportunity to abort the process? The signals…
-
He’s No P. Yiddy
Almost since its inception, hip-hop has had a Jewish element. But for every group with street cred — think the Beastie Boys — there seems to be twice as many kitschy outfits like Two Live Jew and MC Paul Barman. Enter Sneakas, ne Yoni Ben-Yehuda, a 22-year-old budding hip-hop artist who is striving to take…
-
New Welfare Plan Said To Deal Blow To Single Mothers
WASHINGTON — Republican efforts to tighten America’s chief welfare plan could drive poor single mothers deeper into poverty, according to a new report. The current welfare plan, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, was enacted as part of the celebrated welfare reform legislation passed by the Clinton administration in 1996. It ended nearly six…
-
‘Landmark of Dreams’: A Place Teeming With Love, Loss, Memory and Folklore
The mind of choreographer Jody Oberfelder is preoccupied. It swirls with love, folklore and dreams, fixations she shares with another artist of a different medium, Marc Chagall. Oberfelder pulls her ideas and images for dances from diverse sources, including Chinese puzzles and the Brothers Grimm. But Chagall holds a special place in her mind. “Chagall…
-
Sighs of Relief Greet Quebec Separatists’ Defeat
MONTREAL — As they observed Passover last week, many members of Montreal’s 100,000-strong Jewish community were also celebrating what some called a liberation of another sort: the defeat in provincial elections of the nationalist Parti Quebecois, which had been trying since 1994 to promote Quebec’s secession from Canada. The Parti Quebecois, or PQ, was ousted…
-
A Sudden Revelation
Michael Brown sends an interesting query from Toronto. “Can someone,” he asks, “have an epiphany in Yiddish? I have asked around, and no one has been able to provide a Yiddish word or even an expression that incorporates ‘epiphany’ and its social, spiritual and intellectual connotations.” I should begin my answer to Brown’s question by…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Why do Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas?
- 2
News Ben Shapiro is mounting a last stand against right-wing antisemitism. It’s not going well.
- 3
Opinion ‘Jesus is a Palestinian,’ claims a Times Square billboard. Um, not quite
- 4
Fast Forward Vance says ‘religious liberty is a Christian concept.’ Where does that leave Jews?
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The Holocaust survivor writer who can help us through this ominous era
-
Opinion What if Donald Trump puts his name on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum?
-
Fast Forward Israel becomes first country to recognize Somaliland, drawing condemnation from Egypt, Turkey and Somalia
-
Opinion ‘Jesus is a Palestinian,’ claims a Times Square billboard. Um, not quite
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
