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 Sarah Silverman, let’s not use the word ‘Jewface’
Sarah Silverman has once more weighed in on a perennial debate in the world of casting: who gets to play a Jew? It’s a slippery question, and also the name of a parlor game a friend of mine likes to play. Per this friend’s rules, Zachary Levi, a non-Jew who changed his last name from…
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Culture Jon Stewart’s new show is not very funny — it is a mitzvah
The title of Jon Stewart’s new show might have had a double-meaning for almost anyone else. “The Problem with Jon Stewart” sounds like the beginning of a rant by your conservative uncle, or maybe a gripe from a pedantic comedy critic. In its current usage, there is little publicly problematic about the diminutive host, beloved…
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Culture For Your Eyes Only: A casting memo for Jewish James Bonds
Relax on the speculation, everyone. Even you, The Onion. Bond producer Barbara Broccoli announced that she is allowing Daniel Craig a one-year valedictory period before the search commences for a new 007 in 2022. Fittingly, that means the casting department at MGM needs to wait till the end of shmita to replace the legendary spy,…
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Culture SNL taps spooky, subversive Jewish comedian Sarah Sherman
What’s the best way to get a featured player spot on SNL? For new cast member Sarah Sherman, the secret sauce was posting an unsolicited audition tape, where, pinky raised to the corner of her mouth like Dr. Evil, she did impressions of everyone from Donald Trump to the infernal “Little Lad” from that one…
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Culture Tobi Kahn marks a new Jewish ritual — with a new piece of art
What does tikkun olam look like? On Yom HaTzedek, a new holiday that falls on Pesach Sheni, it looks like a box. For Tobi Kahn, the renowned painter and sculptor, that box looks like a city awash in deep blue, its interior reflecting the heavens, its slot like a mailbox to God. On a Wednesday…
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Culture William Shatner may be going to space (please alert space)
Rocket Man indeed. William Shatner, abusive Twitter gadfly and erstwhile Starfleet captain will go to space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin per a TMZ report. If true, Shatner, 90, some few decades older than the cast of “Space Cowboys,” would be the oldest man ever to go to space. (Unless we count the ancient David…
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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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News An audiobook narrator told Zionists to kill themselves. A popular romance novelist hired him anyway.
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