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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Film & TV Harvey Keitel deserves better than ‘Lansky’
After ordering tongue sandwiches and “an assortment of pickles” at a Miami deli, the terminally ill Meyer Lansky asks his handpicked biographer why he wants to write his story. “I don’t think it’s about one man,” says David Stone, the author of a well-received book on John F. Kennedy and a newly single father of…
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Culture For Mel Brooks’ 95th birthday, 4 ways he changed the world
From one Brooks, how many rivers flow? There’s a bit of trivia about the filmmaker, who turns 95 on Monday, that I often turn over in my head. On an episode of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” Carl Reiner said that the two funniest people he knew were Brooks and a 16-year-old kid named Albert Einstein….
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Film & TV How Jewish and Irish humor intermarried on ‘Conan’
Nearly 28 years ago Conan O’Brien filmed himself walking to his first day of work. Along the way, his doorman, hopscotching children and a horse and buggy driver, reminded him he was under “a lot of pressure” and threatened that “he better be good.” O’Brien, an accomplished writer for “SNL” and the “The Simpsons,” but…
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Culture The gay, Jewish scientist the Nazis left alone
The scientist Otto Warburg played a pivotal role in unlocking a central mystery of cancer. But how he was allowed to advance our understanding of the disease is a mystery unto itself. At the time of Hitler’s ascent, when his colleagues fled en masse or were stripped of their positions, Warburg, a gay man from…
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Culture Bagels, challah or hamentaschen? Jerry or George? We ranked choice-voted our favorite Jewish and New York things.
Beyond the usual candidate drama — including but not limited to issues of residency and alleged union-busting and sexual harassment allegations — the big story in this year’s New York City mayoral race is ranked choice voting. For a people with 1.5 opinions per person, Jewish voters, unsurprisingly, have plenty to say. Many may appreciate…
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Fast Forward Janet Malcolm, who challenged and changed journalism, dies at 86
Janet Malcolm, the legendary writer whose seminal books on journalism and psychoanalysis influenced generations of reporters, died Wednesday at the age of 86. Her daughter, Anne Malcolm, told The New York Times that the cause was lung cancer. Malcolm, who began a long career at The New Yorker in 1963 and whose books delved into…
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Culture From the time of Torah to TikToks, 10 of Judaism’s best dads
“Fiddler on the Roof” is unequivocal: It is the father’s lot to, day and night, scramble for a living, feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers and have the final word at home. Well, things have changed for most of us since shtetl days — a net positive — but Papas are still…
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Culture What if ‘Call Me By Your Name’ was French? (And less Jewish)
François Ozon’s “Summer of 85,” which hit the Jewish film festival circuit earlier this year, seems like a coup for any lineup: a sumptuous period piece that competed at Cannes and isn’t about the Holocaust should be opening night material. But what makes it Jewish? The film, which comes to cinemas in New York and…
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