PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture 2 generations of Germans look to the past and future of the country’s Jews
Semon Shabaev and Anja Baron were born in two different Germanys. Baron, 55, grew up in a Berlin with no visible Jewish life; filling that absence was a profound sense of guilt. Shabaev, who turns 21 in April, is a member of a thriving Jewish community and part of a generation committed to thinking beyond…
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Culture The WeWork documentary will keep you guessing how Adam Neumann got away with it
Adam Neumann is a sweaty, frazzled, farting mess. In the opening moments of “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn,” we see the coworking visionary struggling through buzzwords and business speak. He rocks on his feet and paces as he reads from a prompter. It’s hard to see how anyone might…
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Culture Marianne Williamson’s out of this world fix for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israelis and Palestinians have this much in common: Both seem to smile and nod when Marianne Williamson’s on her nonsense. On Tuesday the self-help author, one-time presidential candidate and “Avatar” superfan was trending on Twitter for her recent podcast interview with director James Cameron, where she revealed that she had quoted his giant blue cat…
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Culture Who should Jews root for — Godzilla or King Kong?
Entering April, we’re set for a long-awaited showdown between household names. Folks starved for sporting spectacle studied their brackets all through March. Now, as we await the final battle, the world wonders who will come out on top: King Kong or the King of All Monsters. Oh, also, apparently there’s some college basketball going on….
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Culture This Passover, honor 5 women who made the Exodus possible
This Passover we can honor the tenacity of Miriam, the agency and pain of Yocheved and the commitment of Batya — women whose efforts helped lead us out of Egypt. After all, we owe them. Though they were pivotal to Moses in his efforts to shepherd our people out of bondage, these figures are given…
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Culture Jessica Walter, a wonderful person who played ‘difficult women,’ dies at 80
Jessica Walter, the Emmy-winning actress who embodied the women’s college cliques of the 1930s, the Jewish literati of the 1960s, and had a remarkable final act as two iconic matriarchs in the 2000s, has died at the age of 80, Deadline reports. Walter was born January 31, 1941 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents and raised…
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Culture On Houdini’s 147th birthday, the incredible stories you never heard
Writer’s Note: Today would have been Harry Houdini’s 147th birthday. At least we think so — he always said he was born April 6, possibly out of ignorance of the true date. It’s one more bit of dissembling from a man notorious for invented biography. In honor of the occasion, we are reprinting this piece…
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Culture In Taipei, an artist prepares for a Seder with his own Haggadah
Leon Fenster’s community is hosting what may be one of the largest legal Pesach Seders of 2021 — they’ll be using his Haggadah. The 34-year-old artist will lead the ceremony for a crowd of around 200 people in Taipei, Taiwan, where he has remained through most of the pandemic. It is a city in a…
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