Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

This Week in Forward Arts and Culture

Jon Kalish goes to see “The Concert,” a French comedy about a Russian janitor who hijacks an invitation for the Bolshoi Orchestra to perform in Paris.

Jerome A. Chanes reads (take a deep breath) “An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents With Supplements on Biblical Aramaic.” It’s important, trust us.

Jordana Horn talks to Samuel Maoz about his film “Lebanon” (previously reviewed in the Forward here), which opened in theaters last week.

Claudia B. Braude examines the conflicted Jewish identity of South African author Nadine Gordimer, as expressed in the Nobel laureate’s new collection “Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008.”

Philologos takes the dictionary to task over the etymology of the word “hock.”

Sammy Loren hangs out with Orto-Da, an avant-garde Israeli theater troupe that made a big splash at the California International Theatre Festival.

Over at The Sisterhood, Renee Ghert-Zand reviews Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack.”

And on the Forverts video channel, Itzik Gottesman talks to professor Ber Kotlerman of Bar-Ilan University about Sholom Aleichem and Yiddish Film:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.