Category: Culture

About halfway through “Michael,” the new blockbuster biopic of Michael Jackson, there is a scene in which Jackson (played by his nephew Jafaar) and his lawyer, John Branca (Miles Teller), are sitting with the president of his record label. It’s early in Jackson’s “Thriller” album cycle, as “Billie Jean” has been released as a single, […]

A bestselling author is facing a flurry of anger from fans after advance copies of her upcoming novel identified a character as Israeli — a move that her critics say advances “normalization” of a country they oppose. Rebecca “R. F.” Kuang, the Chinese-American author of the 2023 satirical novel “Yellowface” and “The Poppy War” trilogy, is […]

A New York Times photographer working in Gaza was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for photography for pictures taken during the war with Israel there. The prize committee said it was honoring Saher Alghorra “for his haunting, sensitive series showing the devastation and starvation in Gaza resulting from the war with Israel.” One of Alghorra’s […]

Dory Manor and Moshe Sakal, who run a press for Hebrew literature in Berlin, are often asked if their business is Israeli. The partners in life and publishing come from Israel, though they have lived in Berlin and Paris for the better part of two decades. But they say their publishing house, Altneuland, is neither […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]