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 Seven Decades Later, A Violin – And Its Story Of The Shoah – Finds Its Way Home
In 1943, with the Nazi deportation of Amsterdam’s Jews well under way, Bram Rodrigues and his father, Marcel, decided to flee the Netherlands. But before they left, Bram, who was 18 at the time, visited his friend Johnny de Haan, and asked him for a favor. Bram gave Johnny his violin — his most prized…
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Culture It’s Confirmed: Ruby Rose’s Batwoman Will Be Jewish In New TV Series
When the CW announced last August that gender fluid actor Ruby Rose would play Batwoman in a forthcoming series, some corners of the internet expressed concern that Rose, while queer like the character, is not, also like the character, Jewish. While it has yet to be reported if Rose has taken to the mikveh, “Batwoman”…
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Culture From Diller To Zuckerberg, Here’s What Jewish Execs Are Reading This Summer
What books do some of the world’s busiest Jews crack open in their summer downtime? Not exactly beach reads. NBC reporter Dylan Byers launched his “first annual Byers Market Summer Reading List” August 2, touting exclusive recs from Silicon Valley and Hollywood types from Facebook Chiefs Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, to top William Morris…
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Culture Judge Dismisses Much Of Woody Allen’s Amazon Case
Woody Allen’s $68 million lawsuit against Amazon suffered a major setback July 31, as much of the director’s case was dismissed. In a decision filed Wednesday, a federal judge in New York ruled that four of Allen’s claims against Amazon Studios should be tossed out, Deadline reported. Siding with Amazon on a partial motion to…
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Culture Remembering Herman Melville’s Epic Poem Of The Holy Land – Jews And All
In 1857, at a personal and professional low, Herman Melville made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Since Melville was short of funds, his father-in-law financed the trip. Melville, whose 200th birthday is August 1, was reeling from a string of literary flops, beginning in 1851, with the release of his then-maligned and misunderstood “Moby-Dick.”…
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Culture Yuval Noah Harari Insists The Russian Edition Of His Book Doesn’t Change The Facts
The exact content, if not the nature of the lessons, in Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” may be lost in translation. Harari has faced a backlash in recent days after news broke that the Russian edition of his latest book elided criticisms of Vladimir Putin and substantially changed a…
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Culture Michael Flug, Caretaker And Maker Of Civil Rights History, Dies At 74
Michael Flug, a civil rights, labor organizer and the longtime Chicago library archivist for the Midwest’s largest collection of African American historical documents, died July 11. He was 74. Flug’s life was one committed to service. As a student at Columbia University, Flug was active in CORE – the Congress of Racial Equality, a leading…
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Culture Q&A: Steven Greenhouse on labor’s past, present and future
'We talk about American exceptionalism, and one thing that’s exceptional is corporate power in America is much stronger'
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