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 Netflix’s Holocaust revenge drama changes the facts – is nationalism to blame, or just an actor’s mistake?
As villains go, you can’t do much better than the one at the center of Netflix’s latest, a man called “Doctor Death.” In “Jaguar,” a crew of Spanish Holocaust survivors in 1960s Madrid hunt down Aribert Heim, a real-life Nazi physician who escaped justice for nearly half a century. “He was a doctor at Mauthausen,”…
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Art Now in English, an almost-forgotten story by Sholem Aleichem
We know the usual occupations in Sholom Aleichem’s fiction: dairyman, butcher, tailor. But did you hear the one about pickpockets (or “nimble fingers”), robbers (“snatchers”) and horse thieves? If not, don’t worry — most haven’t. As far as we know, Sholom Aleichem, the beloved Yiddish author best-remembered for his Tevye stories, only wrote about such…
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Culture From Drake to Javanka, 12 celebs who need to atone this Yom Kippur
Everyday Jews have the benefit of not having our sins amplified by TMZ or splashed onto tabloid covers. We can hide in our anonymity and use Yom Kippur to engage personally with our creator, taking stock of our sins while God, like Anna Wintour plotting the Met Gala invitations, decides who will be inscribed in…
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Culture Does ‘Hallelujah’ explain Leonard Cohen? A new movie thinks so.
'Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song,' explains Leonard Cohen's life through his most famous work.
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Culture When Jake Tapper dated Monica Lewinsky — and wrote a gross piece about it
Will Jake Tapper be a character on “Impeachment: American Crime Story?” I don’t mean Jake Tapper the respected CNN anchor, but his former self, Jake Tapper the young Beltway reporter, who made a name for himself when he wrote a detailed dispatch from his date with Monica Lewinsky. That Tapper, whose article, published in the…
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Culture She’s 16. She’s Jewish. She’s Gotham’s newest superhero.
Willow Zimmerman is a 16-year-old activist. When she isn’t in school or holding up a picket sign, she can be found batch-baking rugelach or splitting a Reuben with a stray Great Dane she named Lebowitz (after Fran). But Willow has a secret set of extracurriculars. She helps run an illegal poker game for one of…
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Film & TV I built the ‘Seinfeld’ apartment from Lego — it nearly broke me
I grew up in a house with a framed cocktail napkin signed by Jerry Seinfeld and every episode of his sitcom taped on VHS. All this is to say that I have a long history of welcoming the man into my home and am pretty familiar with the layout of the “Seinfeld” apartment. That said,…
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Culture Will Spike Lee’s 9/11 series feature a conspiracy theorist who welcomes antisemitic canards?
Spike Lee’s searching curiosity makes him one of our best and most eclectic filmmakers. But sometimes he may be asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. As Jeremy Stahl reported Tuesday in Slate, in an advanced cut of the final episode of Lee’s new documentary miniseries on HBO, “NYC Epicenters 9/11–2021½,” the director devoted…
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