
A.J. Goldmann

By A.J. Goldmann
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News Circumcision Controversy Endangers Fight To Keep Rite Legal in Germany
The practice of metzitzah b’peh, a controversial part of some Jewish circumcisions, is reigniting concern about religious circumcision in Germany, where the government only recently fended off an effort to outlaw the ritual altogether. The chief representative of Chabad in Berlin, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, has been accused of making MBP, as metzitzah b’peh is often…
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News Polish Museum Set To Open Spectacular Window on Jewish Past
It is a painfully cold day as a light snow falls on the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and on its immediate neighbor, the monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Inside the museum, nearly 100 workers are putting the finishing touches on the near-completed building. The undulating walls are painted…
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Culture The Assassination of R.B. Kitaj
‘Jewish cultural life with all its disasters, brilliance, learning, evasions and daring has conducted me and my art like an excited zombie or Golem,” the painter R.B. Kitaj wrote in a commentary to his early painting “The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg,” a stark collagelike canvas named for the Jewish revolutionary leader who was assassinated in…
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News German Circumcision Ruling Raises Outcry
A controversial court ruling in Cologne that effectively prohibits most circumcisions in that city has touched a nerve worldwide, and sparked an outcry in Germany that has united Jews and Muslims in a rare common protest. The judgment, delivered on May 5 but only published on June 26, found that the circumcision of a four-year-old…
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Culture Lou Reed’s Return to Dark Roots
“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to…
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The Schmooze German University Gets Liturgical Collection
A German University is set to receive an important collection of Jewish liturgical music. The donation of the collection of Robert Singer, a Viennese cantor, will make the University of Augsburg home to one of the main collections of Jewish liturgical manuscripts and recordings in Europe. The acquisition was formally presented June 25 in a…
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The Schmooze Berlin Jewish Film Festival Turns 18
The words “Mehr Juden ins Kino” (“More Jews to the movies”) are plastered all over Berlin. With its yellow lettering and graffiti-like script, the resemblance to Nazi-era posters is intentional. This is the striking (and somewhat confusing) logo for this year’s Jewish Film Festival Berlin and Potsdam, running from June 4 to 17. The Hamburg-based…
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The Schmooze Happy Birthday, Arthur Schnitzler!
Today is Viennese-Jewish author Arthur Schnitzler’s 150th Birthday. One of the key modernist writers in the German-speaking world, Schnitzler (1862–1931) is regrettably little-known in America. In his plays, stories and novels, Schnitzler painted a vivid portrait of his place and time, fin-de-siècle Vienna. He was also one of the most controversial and experimental writers, both…
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News No Jews allowed: White supremacists are building a segregated community in Arkansas, but is it legal?
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News Zohran Mamdani has represented Astoria’s Jews for 4 years. What do they think of him?
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News Curtis Sliwa has a plan to beat Zohran Mamdani in NYC mayor’s race — and it starts with apologizing to Jews
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Culture Barbra Streisand’s brand-new duet with Bob Dylan is a whole lot different than you might think
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די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: ווען ייִדיש האָט געקלונגען אין די גאַסן פֿון מעקסיקע VIDEO: When Yiddish rang throughout the streets of Mexico
יעקבֿ פֿינקלמאַן באַשרײַבט אויך זײַן לאַנגיאָריקן פֿאַך — ווי ער האָט צוגעשטעלט וויסן אין טעלעקאָמוניקאַציע איבער דער וועלט
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Opinion Want to understand what’s wrong with the ‘pro-Palestine’ movement? This Palestinian can help
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Fast Forward Boulder firebombing suspect’s family can be deported, court says
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