PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture Why ‘Jojo Rabbit’ is heading to a classroom near you
Last year, “Jojo Rabbit,” the Hitler Youth satire by Taika Waititi, charmed audiences and baffled skeptics, managing to be whimsical, winning and kind-hearted — while also featuring an imaginary Adolf Hitler who dines on unicorns. Now, the Oscar-winning film is on its way to classrooms as a teaching tool, aimed at educating young people about…
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Culture An intimate tribute to Rachel Cowan, trailblazing rabbi
Filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman remembers her first private conversation with Rabbi Rachel Cowan in 1989. “We were in a hot tub on a Wexner retreat in Aspen, Colorado,” Weiman-Kelman said over the phone from her home in Israel. “She was teaching and she was just extraordinary. There’s like 12 years between us, and at that time…
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Culture Auschwitz Museum objects to ‘Hunters’ over invented Nazi atrocities
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has accused Amazon’s Nazi revenge series “Hunters” of recklessly inventing a Holocaust atrocity. The museum’s objection came in response to a central sequence involving a grisly game of chess. In the first episode, two members of the central 1970s Nazi-hunting crew —mastermind Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino) and his protégé Jonah (Logan…
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Film & TV A cult Israeli rock opera seeks cult movie success
Anti-war messages, as much electric guitar riffs, are a common theme of rock musicals from “Hair” to “American Idiot.” It’s no surprise that Israel has a peacenik rock opera, too, but you may find yourself bewildered by what it has to say. Keren Yedaya’s “Red Fields” (2019), which opens the New York Sephardic Film Festival…
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Culture The curator of the Polish Jewish museum wins $500k award – here’s her story
In late January, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett received a call from an unfamiliar Israeli number. It was the president of Tel Aviv University, informing her she had received an award of half a million dollars. “It’s like a TV show when they call you completely out of the blue,” said Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator…
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Culture About that Pete Buttigieg Bernie Sanders essay…
WRITER’S NOTE: During a February 2020 Democratic debate in Nevada, NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Mayor Pete Buttigieg about a 2000 essay he wrote in praise of Bernie Sanders. “The qualities I admired then are qualities I still respect a great deal,” Buttigieg responded. “I never said that I agree with every part of his policy…
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Culture Why Theodor Herzl still matters
Theodor Herzl did not live to see Israel realized, but he is arguably the country’s most enduring visionary. In less than a decade, before his early death in 1904, at the age of 44, Herzl lifted the Zionist movement from obscurity to a palpable political force through his magnetism and dedication. Many Israelis and Zionists…
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Culture It’s Nazis vs. Nazi hunters in Amazon’s comic book revenge fantasy
The opening credits of Amazon’s “Hunters,” a new series about a crew of Nazi-killing avengers in late 1970s New York, unfold over the backdrop of a chess board. The game’s hand-painted pieces take on the shape of the central players — a bloodied young man with a knife, a black woman with an afro and…
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