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 As Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial begins in New York, new assault charges emerge in LA
On Monday, soon after a walker-bound Harvey Weinstein limped into New York’s State Supreme Court in Manhattan for the preliminary steps in his first criminal trial, the movie mogul was hit with new rape and sexual assault charges in California. Los Angeles prosecutors released a criminal complaint with new charges against Weinstein made by two…
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Culture The Golden Globes were a massive bummer
Ah, the Golden Globes. The Oscars’s boozy, antic European cousin. It seems like each year the Hollywood Foreign Press-hosted event reflects a larger conversation around race, gender and politics — but often with a lag. When Ricky Gervais hosts, there is, along with an air of celebrity ego-slashing, there’s often a literal delay to mute…
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Culture Something old, something blue: Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody’ enters the public domain
The theme to Manhattan — both the borough and the film — has entered the public domain. George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” penned in 1924, for bandleader Paul Whiteman, entered the creative commons as of January 1, 2020. (2020 marks only the second year since 1999 that new works have become available in the US,…
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Culture Meet the comics bringing Jews and Muslims together through stand-up
In April of 2019, comedian Eitan Levine held a five-day comedy festival at his New York apartment. Yeganeh Mafaher was part of a diverse slate of comics who graced Levine’s living room with her set, which explores — among other topics — being Iranian-American and looking like Anne Frank. The two had not met before…
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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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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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Yiddish World Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
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Fast Forward Holocaust survivor event features a Rob Reiner video address — recorded just weeks before his death
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