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 Mourning ‘Actors Studio’ host James Lipton — and remembering his best moments
James Lipton, the oft-parodied host of “Inside the Actors Studio” has died at the age of 93. Famous for his pomposity, Mid-Atlantic accent and corny closing questions, Lipton was a meme-worthy figure before the advent of memes. “MadTV” and “Saturday Night Live” skewered him, with cast members playing up his pretension; for “The Simpsons,” he…
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Culture Will Pope Pius’ archives shed light on his silence during the Shoah?
Over a 75 years after Nazis conducted mass deportations of Roman Jews to Auschwitz, we may finally learn why Pope Pius XII, heralded by some as a man who quietly saved Jewish lives and dubbed “Hitler’s Pope” by others, did not speak up on their behalf. On March 2 Pius XII’s archives will be made…
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Culture Bernie Sanders made a documentary on Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, and it’s the most Bernie Sanders thing ever
If Bernie Sanders looks and sounds like a man who once produced amateur socialist agitprop out of his home, it may be because he did just that. Yes, in 1977, after a failed run for Vermont’s governorship, Sanders and his neighbor Nancy Barnett launched the American People’s Historical Society, an educational video endeavor billed in…
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Culture NYC subway map designer Michael Hertz dies at 87
Michael Hertz, the graphic designer who helped make the New York City subway system legible for over 4 million riders a day, has passed away. He was 87. Hertz’s son Eugene confirmed his death, telling CNN he died of natural causes on February 18, at Nassau University Medical Center. In 1979, Hertz’s firm, Michael Hertz…
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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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