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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Fast Forward 2 Teens Charged With ‘Criminal Mischief’ For Graffiti Outside New Jersey Synagogue
Late Saturday night, hours after the stabbing of five in a Hasidic neighborhood in Monsey, N.Y. a New Jersey resident discovered graffiti near an Orthodox synagogue in the borough of Highland Park. Now, two teens have been charged with five counts of criminal mischief for the vandalism. Absent from the charges is a hate crime,…
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Fast Forward Monsey Stabber Charged With Hate Crime, FBI Says Journals Point To Anti-Semitism
The family of Grafton Thomas, the man accused of stabbing five Hasidic Jews at a Hanukkah party in Monsey, N.Y., says he has no link to hate groups and blames his alleged actions on mental illness. The FBI argues that Thomas’s journal entries and search history show a man preoccupied with Jewish control and anti-Semitic…
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Fast Forward Times Revises Bret Stephens’ ‘Jewish Genius’ Op-Ed
Days after publication, The New York Times removed chunks of text referring to an academic paper from Bret Stephens’s controversial column on “Jewish genius.” The reason? The study Stephens cited was co-authored by a man considered a white nationalist. Stephens quoted the paper’s statistics on IQ in a column “The Secrets of Jewish Genius,”, in…
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Culture Jerry Herman, Tony-winning composer of ‘La Cage’ and ‘Hello, Dolly,’ dies at 88
Jerry Herman, the Tony-winning composer-lyricist who gave showstoppers to Broadway’s leading ladies and vibrant voice to gay life during the AIDS crisis, died in Miami on Thursday. He was 88. Born in Manhattan, Gerald Sheldon Herman’s love affair with musical theater began when he was a young teen, after he saw Ethel Merman in “Annie…
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Culture Made of gold, not clay: Give the world’s most valuable dreidel a spin
They didn’t make this one out of clay. A New York diamond dealer has just set a Guinness World Record for the world’s most valuable dreidel, valued at $70,000. With a hand-made body composed of 18 karat gold, symbols inlaid with diamonds and a 4.20 carat diamond at the top’s point, Estate Diamond Jewelry’s sales…
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Culture In 1913, a rabbi appeared on film for the very first time — in a Christmas movie
As the winter winds whipped through lower Manhattan in the days before Christmas in 1913, a group of rabbis took shelter in a screening room to watch a film that claimed to be about them. It was the first American movie to feature a rabbi as a character. Shortly after the screening, a report from…
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Culture Psychedelics Pioneer And New Age Guru Ram Dass Dies At 88
Baba Ram Dass, the self-effacing guru, psychedelic evangelist and promoter of Eastern theology died December 22 at his home in Maui, Hawaii. A post on Ram Dass’s Instagram page reported his passing at the age of 88. Before Ram Dass became a best-selling New Age author, and even before he partnered with Timothy Leary in…
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Culture Beirut: Public Sculpture Resembling Star Of David Removed After Outrage
After a spate of online outrage, Lebanese authorities have removed a sculpture from Beirut’s Martyr Square. The reason? If viewed from above, the geometric artwork appears looks like a Star of David. According to Hyperallergic, the sculpture, British artist Nathaniel Rackowe’s “LP46,” became the center of a controversy on December 15, when a photograph of…
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