In 1976, deep in New York City’s fiscal crisis, the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles read a review of her conceptual work in the Village Voice. In his review, critic David Bourdon made a radical suggestion inspired by Ukeles’ thesis: What if municipal work, like the Sanitation Department, were conceptual art? Could it get funded by […]
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This article was produced as part of (JR)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. The first time 14-year-old Matan Stein, an avid contemporary music fan in Israel, tried to play one of his favorite songs and nothing happened, he was confused. […]
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Acclaimed author J.D. Salinger asked his publisher to remove references to his Jewish heritage in the book jacket of “The Catcher in the Rye,” newly surfaced letters from 1951 reveal. The request came in a letter from Salinger, a notoriously private man, and his editor, John Woodburn at publisher Little, Brown and Co. The correspondence, […]
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Matzah is not something I typically give much thought to in the days following Passover. Yet I cannot stop thinking about a piece of shmura matzah I recently encountered. The encounter came on Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” where the handmade round matzah (that always tastes a little burnt) just had a major cameo […]
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PHILADELPHIA — At a moment when institutions across the country are asking how to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History is putting Jews at the center of the origin story. Its new exhibition, “The First Salute,” is about the tiny Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius and the relative handful […]
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Progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart has won the 2026 PEN America Literary Award for nonfiction for his latest book, “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.” Beinart, who has long been an outspoken critic of Israel, is the editor-at-large of the leftist Jewish Currents magazine and a professor at CUNY’s Newmark School of […]
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Sam Firstenberg, the Israeli-raised director behind cult B-movie staples like “American Ninja” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is getting an unexpected career revival — thanks to one of his most overlooked films. “Riverbend,” his little-seen 1989 action drama, will screen for one night at Alama Drafthouse theaters in five cities on April 29, offering a […]
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In an interview on a popular web series posted Tuesday, rock musician Julian Casablancas alleged that “American Zionists” are deeply privileged yet behave as if they are “Black people during slavery.” The comment appears in a 21-minute “uncut” edition of the web series SubwayTakes, in which host Kareem Rahma interviews both famous and up-and-coming New […]
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Charlie Scheidt and Kat Rohrer met from opposite sides of the 20th-century moral universe: Scheidt is the only child of German Jewish refugees, raised in New York in a family haunted by what came “before”; she is the granddaughter of a committed Nazi soldier, raised in Austria amid an atmosphere of denial, silence and only […]
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Four days before she would bury her only son, Rachel Goldberg-Polin stood at the edge of Israel, screaming toward the unforgiving territory where Hersh was being held hostage more than 50 feet underground. Her voice cracked as she called his name, her raw emotion shattering the facade of composure she had projected when speaking weeks […]
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