
PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.

PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
In 2015, shortly before he died at the age of 82, Oliver Sacks was eating from a Tupperware container of green Jell-O, when he decided to tell a room full of people something deeply revealing. “Time was – it doesn’t occur now, but it used to occur until a few years ago – when I…
In the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, obituaries across the country lauded the jurist for her contributions to America’s judiciary system and civic life. But one contained a claim about Ginsburg’s personal life that left some Jews puzzled, and others outraged. The Guardian’s September 18 obituary initially declared that the justice had “abandoned her…
He’s baaaack. Hot off a revival of past antisemitic remarks, Mel Gibson is reportedly hard at work on a sequel to his 2004 antisemitic opus, “The Passion of the Christ.” Jim Caviezel, who played the role of Jesus in the film, told Breitbart in a recent interview that his character, while having suffered through unspeakable…
Most Emmys nights, the stars are out in force. In 2020, they stayed in, and didn’t so much take home awards as have them delivered to their doorstep. Host Jimmy Kimmel worked the room at an empty Staples Center, bare but for a skeleton camera crew and the occasional socially-distanced celebrity cameo. Yet for the…
News of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death at the age of 87 reached Jews right as many were preparing for the start of our holiest season: It was the first night of Rosh Hashanah, and the beginning of the Jewish New Year. And so, a time of joy and sweetness became something else….
“I’ve had a chance to look at my life over the last few weeks, and I realize I’ve made a lot of bad decisions.” This line, delivered by Wallace Shawn, toward the end of a trailer for Woody Allen’s “Rifkin’s Festival,” premiering at the San Sebastian Film Festival September 18, would appear to be the…
There’s a story about Dwight D. Eisenhower that has become the stuff of legend. After witnessing the horrors of Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany as the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, he told his men who liberated the camps to collect testimony and film and photograph everything, because “the day will…
Marc Chagall loved his flying figures. Some have speculated that the recurring image of humble folks floating through the sky and over cityscapes is a riff on his own identification as a luftmentsh, or “airman,” a dreamer with big ideas but no concrete plans to realize them. But to anchor Chagall to this one meaning…
100% of profits support our journalism