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The Schmooze

This Week in Forward Arts and Culture

  • “Howl!,” the Allen Ginsberg biopic starring James Franco, comes out this week. Jake Marmer takes a look at Ginsberg’s literary afterlife in print, film and comic form.

  • On Rosh Hashanah we eat fish heads — architect Frank Ghery made fish lamps instead. Gavriel Rosenfeld tells us why.

  • On Yom Kippur we wish each other a “good seal.” Philologos recalls the days when a seal was an indispensable personal accessory.

  • In the latest Yid Lit podcast, Allison Gaudet Yarrow talks to Adam Langer about his novel, “The Thieves of Manhattan,” previously reviewed in the Forward here.

  • Forward arts and culture editor Dan Friedman talks to Mark Cohen, editor of “Missing a Beat: The Rants and Regrets of Seymour Krim,” (reviewed in the Forward here) about why Krim has been neglected as a Beat, a writer and a Jew.

  • In our fall books section, Netty C. Gross looks into the Orthodox publishing industry; Rachel Gordan fondly remembers Herman Wouk’s ”Marjorie Morningstar”; Benjamin Ivry remembers, not so fondly, Leon Uris; Julius Novick thinks about Sarah Bernhardt and Yale’s new Jewish book series; Peter Ephross reviews a biography of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal; Ranen Omer-Sherman praises David Grossman’s latest novel, and Donald Kimelman proclaims Forward staff writer Gal Beckerman’s history of the Soviet Jewry movement a “masterful and highly readable history.”

  • And this week on the Forverts video channel, Dr. Max Kohn hosts a discussion about the documentary film “The Jews of Ukraine”:

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