JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Synagogue was never a particularly religious place for me. The songs, prayers and rituals I observed and participated in at my hometown Conservative synagogue just never really did it for me. By “it,” I mean the feeling that I always sensed I was supposed have inside that building with the stained-glass windows, wood-backed pews and…
In this podcast, Forward Managing Editor Dan Friedman talks with award-winning author Naomi Alderman. Her first novel, Disobedience, won her the Orange Award for New Writers and got her shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the Sami Rohr Prize. She is in the studio to discuss her new novel, The Liars’…
“The Jesus Discovery: The Resurrection Tomb that Reveals the Birth of Christianity” By James D. Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici Simon & Schuster, 272 pages, $27.95 In 1835, David Strauss published “The Life of Jesus Critically Examined,” which debunked the miraculous elements of the New Testament and inaugurated the modern recovery of the “real Jesus.” Strauss…
It looks like iTunes must have been snoozing during Comparative Religions 101. The Jerusalem Post found that the world’s largest online music and video vendor doesn’t seem to know the difference between Jewish and Christian music. Or maybe it just doesn’t care. The newspaper reported that it found most popular Jewish singers’ songs and albums…
I’ve always had a deep appreciation for bluegrass. A form of Southern mountain music in overdrive, bluegrass coalesced in the late 1940s when Kentucky mandolinist and singer Bill Monroe, who had previously played old-time country and Appalachian music in a duo with his brother Charlie, formed a band called the Blue Grass Boys. The band…
She’s got the No. 1 album in the country — and, apparently, she can relate to the Bible’s Queen Esther. Katy Perry, who’s dominated radio waves since May with the inescapable pop single “California Gurls,” went straight to the top spot September 1 with the release of her third album, “Teenage Dream.” In addition to…
