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
-
Iranian Threat Looms Large In War’s ‘Day After’ Scenario
JERUSALEM — While Israelis gear up for an expected American war on Iraq, their leaders are increasingly preoccupied with “The Day After.” Most senior strategists here believe Israel would emerge in a stronger position after a war. A changed regime in Baghdad is widely expected to create new opportunities for Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians. No…
-
U.S. Troops Stationed in Israel Shoulder Unique Tax Burden
American servicemen manning Patriot missile batteries in Israel are having their wages garnished for federal taxes, even though other troops stationed in what is likely to become the Iraq war theater are exempted from such levies. That, said Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York, is an injustice that should be rectified. “Usually, when we…
-
Rabbi’s Heirs Sue For Music Rights
The late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach was masterful with a guitar and had a sweet way with words. But the late “singing rabbi” hit a flat note when it came to paperwork: The chasidic maestro rarely penned contracts, licenses or copyrights — and never composed a will. As a result, a multimillion-dollar global music industry flourishes…
The Latest
-
PSALM 151
Bay Area poet David Meltzer has been exploring the pathways of Jewish mysticism for contemporary poetry since the 1960s and his own generosity as a publisher and reader of poetry has inspired generations of poets — including those he teaches at the graduate poetics program of the New College of California at San Francisco. He…
-
Ranting Poet’s Visit Makes For a Disturbing Week at Yale
As Yale Daily News columnist Eli Muller put it last Friday, “It has been an unpleasant week to be Jewish at Yale.” The trouble started when the university’s Afro-American Cultural Center decided to host controversial poet Amiri Baraka for a reading and discussion of his poem, “Somebody Blew Up America.” In that now infamous work,…
-
Secrets of the City
A SERIALIZED NOVEL By Anne Roiphe CHAPTER 65: IN LOVE WITH A SLEEPING WOMAN In Chapter 64, an old man on a bridge evoked Elijah. * * *| That night after Brooke hit the stranger on the bridge she slept as she hadn’t slept since she was a girl. Jacob came home late from the…
-
In a Jerusalem Praying for Unity, Sectarianism Widens the Divide
The acting mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, was “busy” last Friday. That morning a delegation from the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion — headed by Chairman Burton Lehman, and including former chairmen Richard Scheuer and Stanley Gold — was scheduled to meet with Mayor Lupolianski at his office in City…
-
Sephardic Music Comes Out of the Shadows
More than faithfully reproducing centuries-old Sephardic melodies, an emerging group of American Jewish songwriters is developing a Jewish world-beat sound that includes Sephardic melodies and instruments, whether sung in Hebrew, English, Ladino (Sephardic Judeo-Spanish) or even Yiddish. In St. Louis, for example, Jewish Renewal Rabbi James Stone Goodman improvises darting lines on the oud, the…
-
THE FEATHERMAN FILE
Of Noteworthy Items in the Press Trunk Lines: Can the American left find its way back to a healthy pride in America? Probably not until it learns a healthy respect for the Jewish roots of America’s political culture, author Jim Sleeper argues in the winter issue of Dissent magazine. “[T]ry to explain the power of…
-
Having a Gay Old Time At Uncle’s Brit Ahava
Josie’s childhood is already pretty different from mine. I took my first airplane flight when I was a year old (to see Grandma in Florida); she took hers at 5 weeks (to see Auntie Ellen wed in Milwaukee). I wasn’t present at my own baby-naming; my dad ran into shul on a Monday morning and…
-
Libeskind’s WTC Vision Was Born of Socialist Bronx
As a young man living in the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx, Daniel Libeskind — the architect selected this week to rebuild the World Trade Center site — recalls being immersed in an environment in which progressive politics, Yiddish literary debates and a community spirit thrived. “It shaped me completely,” Libeskind told the Forward. It’s…
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward A whites-only, no-Jews community says it’s found a legal loophole. A Jewish lawmaker in Pennsylvania wants to close it.
- 2
Film & TV So, what’s the deal with the honey scene in ‘Marty Supreme?’
- 3
Culture Why do Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas?
- 4
Opinion What if Donald Trump puts his name on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum?
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Israel suspends operations of multiple humanitarian organizations in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders
-
Fast Forward Absolute Bagels is back — and Jewish New Yorkers are lining up in droves
-
Music How I found freedom in a Passover Seder, an amp and a red Fender Duo-Sonic guitar
-
Fast Forward In a first, President Donald Trump to receive Israel Prize, the country’s top civilian honor
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism