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 A stunning documentary recalls the many times Babyn Yar was forgotten
Sergei Loznitsa's "Babi Yar. Context," grapples with events many would rather not discuss
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Culture It was the strangest Oscars in recent memory. Was it also the least Jewish?
The slap heard round the world stole the thunder of an evening that ended with an iconic moment of silent applause. And yet, it is the Flash’s shattering of the sound barrier that stays with me. The 94th Academy Awards featured, for the first time, an audience-polled segment ranking iconic sequences in film. As picked…
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Fast Forward Synagogue bomb plotter fights for religious right to wield Thor’s hammer, compares it to Star of David
They say only the worthy can wield Thor’s hammer. Someone who planned to blow up a synagogue probably doesn’t meet that criteria. Richard Holzer, a Colorado man and professed neo-Nazi, sentenced to 20 years in prison for plotting to explode Temple Emanuel in Pueblo, Colo. is now under supervised release following a 2020 plea agreement….
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Film & TV ‘WeCrashed’ is a live action cartoon of an Israeli CEO’s fall from grace
In the world of startups, WeWork’s Adam Neumann was a unicorn – the figurehead of a mythic, privately held company worth north of a billion dollars. In the world of Jews he was something just as legendary: 6’5”. Jared Leto – who plays Neumann in the new AppleTV+ show “WeCrashed,” the latest in a litany…
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Culture ‘The shame stayed with me.’ How a bullying incident from 1965 became an Oscar nominee.
Sadly, it could have been any day in fifth grade. A kid got the whole class in trouble, so the whole class retaliated, piling onto him outside of the school. Some spat, some hit – taking turns until the principal and teacher broke it up. Jay Rosenblatt had largely forgotten the specifics of why he…
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Culture In Zelenskyy’s Mordechai-like Purim plea, Biden is as uneasy as Esther
Centuries ago, in a story we tell each year on this night, a plea was made to someone with access to power, but who faced no small risk. “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace,” Mordechai, a Jew living in Persia told…
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Culture In a delightful new Purim film, Esther is a secret agent in Argentina
In its long history, the Purim story has had its fair share of reboots. Because, in every generation, a new Haman arrives to oppress us, that genocidal adviser has worn the face of Hitler and, when Stalin suffered a stroke on Purim, averting his own dire plans for Jews, he wore a different mustache entirely….
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Culture Barry Manilow on dueling cantors, Levy’s Rye and his musical’s New York debut
Barry Manilow never meant to become a pop star, and his Grammy, Emmy and Tony-winning career as a songwriter is a source of perennial tsuris for his lyric-writing partner Bruce Sussman. If you ask them, “Mandy” came, gave and (forget what you heard) did some taking. That breakout hit diverted the pair’s original ambition: writing…
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