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 Everything Jewish In Slate’s New American Songbook
On October 18, 2018 Slate revealed their “New American Songbook,” drawn from the insights of critics and musicians including Chuck Klosterman, Carl Wilson and The Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay. As is typical, Jews over-performed, even beating out those famous Swedish masters of Pop Max Martin and Dr. Luke. Of the 30 tracks to be…
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Culture Switzerland’s Oldest Shtetls Are Working To Keep The Culture Alive
18 Miles northwest of Zurich are two shtetls whose homes, synagogues and cemetery survived World War II. And yet, they’re Jewish ghost towns. Only a vanishingly small number of the villages’ once thriving Jewish population remain in the area and the culture they supported is on life support. But a few Jews are hoping to…
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Culture Israel’s First Jesus Museum Shows How He (And First Century Jews) Lived
In June the first Israeli exhibit devoted to the life of Jesus of Nazareth opened at the Terra Sancta Museum in the eastern part of Jerusalem’s Old City. But while visitors might expect remnants of the True Cross or other props from the Passion, this exhibit, “Daily Life at the Time of Jesus,” has a…
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Art A Dutch Art Restitution Project Is Reuniting Jews With Nazi-Looted Work
While it has only existed for nine years, the Dutch restitution project, Museale Verwervingen is already close to completing its mission to find and return art stolen from Jewish families by Nazis and their collaborators. 172 pieces from 42 Dutch museums and the Royal Collection have been identified as potentially looted. Many of the items,…
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Film & TV ‘The Eugenics Crusade’ On PBS Sheds Light On An Ugly American Phenomenon
For most Americans, eugenics exists in the cobwebs of history. It’s a musty, bogus relic now universally dismissed by the scientific community as a racist doctrine that misunderstands sociological factors. But watching the documentary “The Eugenics Crusade,” which premieres on PBS October 16 at 8:00 PM, one finds eerie echoes of the current discourse around…
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Culture Netflix’s ‘Big Mouth’ Is Boldly Jewish
Netflix’s “Big Mouth” is not for everyone. Though its charming animation and middle-school aged characters suggest something for the K-12 set, its excessively filthy humor makes it inappropriate for a large chunk of that demographic. By the same token, its extreme ribaldry, often paired with useful but sometimes didactic lessons about puberty, contraception and body…
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Culture On The Books: 5 Questions For Stephen Shepard, Author Of ‘A Literary Journey To Jewish Identity’
Following a long career as a writer and editor with Newsweek and Businessweek and a storied tenure as the Founding Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, Stephen Shepard has been spending his retirement revisiting the books of his youth. The result of these re-readings is a book…
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Culture Don’t Compare Stephen Miller To Pig-Pen!
In an October 10 article in the Hollywood Reporter, Stephen Miller’s former third-grade teacher from Franklin Elementary School compared Trump’s Senior Advisor to the beloved “Peanuts” character Pig-Pen. How dare she? “Do you remember that character in ‘Peanuts,’ the one called Pig Pen (sic), with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him?” Miller’s…
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