PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
-
Culture Check Out The New Song From ‘Hamilton’ With Music By John Kander
For all of its many merits “Hamilton” doesn’t have much to offer fans of good old fashioned show tunes. Leave it to legendary “Cabaret” composer John Kander, one half of Jewish duo Kander and Ebb, to remedy that. In one of his trademark #HamilDrops show creator Lin-Manuel Miranda released a brand new Hamilton-themed song for…
-
Culture The Most Notable Jewish Books Of The Year
The books of 2018 brought fresh perspectives, vital voices and new ways to examine questions of identity, history and even literature itself. And many of the best were authored by members of the tribe. Admittedly, we’re a bit biased, so don’t take our word for it: Look to The New York Times Book Review, which…
-
Culture Steven Berkoff Is Writing A Harvey Weinstein Play — And He Wants To Star
Actor and playwright Steven Berkoff wants to stage and star in a production of “Harvey.” No, not the 1944 Mary Chase comedy about an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit, but a new, one-act, one-man show about the very visible movie mogul and alleged sex offender Harvey Weinstein. “I like evil people,” Berkoff said in a November 20…
-
Culture Historian Ron Chernow Will Hold Dais At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Next year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner may not be as controversial — or funny — as this year’s. The WHCA announced on November that Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer-winning biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and John D. Rockefeller, will be the featured speaker of the festivities on April 27, 2019. The selection of Chernow…
-
Film & TV With ‘The Kominsky Method’ Chuck Lorre Gets The Netflix Boost
A welcome, if counterintuitive, symptom of the age of Netflix has been the revival of old Hollywood careers. It may have all started with 2015’s “Grace and Frankie” which gave a starring platform to Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, whom studios had tended to neglect or bury in grandma roles. In “Grace and Frankie” Tomlin…
-
Art Remembering Oskar Rabin, Soviet Painter, Dissident And Exile
Oskar Rabin, a leading figure in subversive Soviet art who first gained international attention for hanging from a moving bulldozer, died November 7 in Florence. He was 90 years old. Rabin was in Florence for an exhibition of his work, The New York Times reports. The filmmaker Evgeny Smoljanski, who directed a documentary about the…
-
Theater Yiddish Fiddler Will Move Off-Broadway In February
It’s next year in Midtown for the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbeine’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Playbill reports that the all-Yiddish production of the musical, directed by the legendary performer Joel Grey and translated into Yiddish by Shraga Friedman, will transfer from lower Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage to Off-Broadway’s Stage 42 where it…
-
Culture Hitler’s Jewish ‘Sweetheart’ Was A 7-Year Old Girl
Adolf Hitler spent his first birthday as Chancellor of Germany embracing and laughing with a seven-year-old Jewish girl. He called her “sweetheart,” and she called him “Uncle Hitler.” On April 20, 1933 at the Berghof, Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps, the Nazi leader posed for photos with Rosie Bernile Nienau, whose grandmother was Jewish…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Mississippi fire suspect called the temple a ‘synagogue of Satan’
- 2
News Synagogue arson suspect posted satirical antisemitic cartoon on day of the attack
- 3
News The ADL’s turn away from civil rights was years in the making — Oct. 7 accelerated it
- 4
Culture He works at a Holocaust museum by day. How’d he end up in ‘Marty Supreme’?
In Case You Missed It
-
Film & TV Judd Apatow on why Mel Brooks’ influence ‘will last as long as our jokes’
-
Opinion I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever
-
News Black and Jewish people were allies once. Can they be again?
-
Fast Forward Why is AIPAC targeting Trump’s ICE funding?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
