Welcome to your monthly tour of the Jewish literary landscape! I have four new titles to share and a special announcement — we just launched our Bookshop storefront, where you can shop the books recommended in this newsletter. I’ll be keeping the page updated with titles I’m loving, Forward Book Club picks, and other fun…
In May, the Forward spoke to architect Manuel Herz about a new synagogue he’d designed at the site of Babyn Yar (for years commonly referred to as Babi Yar), where SS officers and Ukrainian allies murdered 34,000 Jews in 1941. Herz modeled the structure after the colorful wooden synagogues that once dotted the Pale of…
Outside 58 Weidestraat in Amsterdam’s Betondorp district, two brass stones lie set into the sidewalk. Known by the Dutch as stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones,” the square plaques are engraved with the names of Jews who moved to this neighborhood upon its creation after the First World War and were deported during the Second. Herman Richard…
Everything you need to know about George Washington and the Jews
After the Washington Post released the first complete accounting of members of Congress who owned enslaved people, the Forward ran all nine Jews who entered Congress before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, through the database. What we found: Only two Jews on the list of more than 1,700 congresspeople — David…
The newest installation at the Jewish Museum tells the story of a vanished world. But a series of entirely contemporary photographs are among the most striking objects on display. Captured by the Dutch architectural photographer Iwan Baan, the photos show a series of opulent rooms filled with prosaic everyday objects. A hand sanitizer dispenser stands…
It was the barbed wire that made me sense that something evil had happened. Thick, coiled and with fierce barbs every inch or so, I found it in some undergrowth on Alderney, a British island that lies just seven miles from the coast of France. You won’t find examples of it anymore, for in the…
Read this article in Yiddish. Jewish crime ain’t what it used to be. In 1908, New York Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham caused a scandal when he asserted in an article in the North American Review that half the city’s criminals were Jews. The Jewish community was outraged and Bingham was forced to retract his statement….
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