Jake Romm
By Jake Romm
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Culture Billy Joel Is 68 Today — And His Music Is Still Terrible
What does the typical Billy Joel fan look like? It’s a serious question. We can, I think to at least a small degree of accuracy, guess what the typical Sex Pistols fan looked like back in their heyday, or the typical Spice Girls fan in theirs. But, what about Billy Joel? His music is so…
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Culture How Graphic Designer Saul Bass Drew Us Into The Movies
Graphic designer Saul Bass is one of those towering figures in American film whose name is far less well-known than his work. His work appears in the films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick. If you’ve seen “Catch Me If You Can” (2002), “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005), “Mad…
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Culture For Arvo Pärt, Music And Silence Are Divine
In her essay, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” Susan Sontag writes that “the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence.” Though Sontag never mentions the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (of whom she could hardly have been aware at the time),…
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Fast Forward Jordan Peele Signs Deal With Universal Pictures And Blumhouse
If you enjoyed Jordan Peele’s hit debut “Get Out,” then the following news should excite you: Universal Pictures, in conjunction with Jason Blum’s Blumhouse, just signed a “first-look” deal with Peele. According to a report at Variety, the deal includes a commitment to develop Peele’s next film “an untitled social thriller, which he will write,…
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Culture When Smart Rabbis Make Dumb Videos We Must Demand Better
Recently, there’s been a trend to act as if the rising anti-Semitism across the Western world sprang from nothing. Not that there are no reasons behind the rise, but simply that before the resurgence of far right movements, anti-Semitism was simply not around in any meaningful capacity. We know this, of course, to be false….
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Fast Forward Barack Obama Announces Design For His Presidential Library
Barack and Michelle Obama announced the design for the Obama Presidential Library. The structure will be designed by the husband and wife architectural team of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Williams and Tsien have previously designed for organizations like The Jewish Theological Seminary, and The University of Chicago, which will host the library. The design…
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Culture How Philippe Halsman Reinvented The Portrait
I’ve never truly believed the idea that portrait photography can tell us a clear truth about its subject. When we look at a portrait of Samuel Beckett, for instance, we might read a certain depth of life, and a certain hawk-like incisiveness, into the nooks and crannies of his face. But despite the expressiveness of…
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Culture Despite Threats, Congress Proposes NEA Funding Increase, Not Elimination
If there is one thing those of us who oppose Trump can celebrate about the man and his presidency, it is his propensity to abandon proposals he had previously championed — like completely dismantling Obamacare or putting Hillary Clinton in prison, to name a few. His administration’s new budget blueprint, which excludes, for instance, funding…
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News Who was Horst Wessel, and why are people comparing Charlie Kirk to him?
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Culture Charlie Kirk kept a ‘Jewish Sabbath.’ What did he mean by that?
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Film & TV Robert Redford’s legacy is surprisingly Jewish
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Antisemitism Decoded Israel is being blamed for Charlie Kirk’s death. Here’s what that conspiracy theory says about the far right’s divide
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Opinion The terrifying Nazi precedent for Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — and the reasons to stay hopeful
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Fast Forward Freed hostage Edan Alexander says he’s returning to the IDF next month
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Yiddish World How a Yiddish acting troupe fooled the Tsarist government
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Fast Forward After years of war, world’s oldest synagogue paintings are revealed as intact in Damascus
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