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 Is Serbia using a Holocaust film as nationalist propaganda?
'Dara of Jasenovac' is the first feature-length narrative about the death camp - but is it trying to score political points?
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Culture A new musical finds life in a Soviet Jewish homeland
Giles Howe has a story to tell about two Jewish homelands. The first is Israel, which he first encountered, like many Millennial Jews, on a Taglit Birthright trip. On his return — realizing he “knew very little about a lot” — he decided to explore his heritage to find where he belonged. He soon discovered…
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Culture Can we laugh at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Jewish lasers?’
I have a theory. Sometime in 2018, Marjorie Taylor Greene, recovering from periodontal surgery and still coming down from anesthesia, was flipping through channels and got very confused. First she landed on Norman Jewison’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” got bored with the character of the old butcher, and found her way to “Star Wars.” Somewhere…
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Culture Muse to Jews, Cloris Leachman played funny, flawed women
“Every time I hear a horse whinny I will forever think of Cloris’ unforgettable Frau Blücher,” Mel Brooks wrote Wednesday on Twitter, as the media reported Cloris Leachman’s death at the age of 94. Indeed, few characters or performances have been so linked to Foley sound as Leachman’s turn as the eldritch housekeeper from Brooks’…
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Culture Watch out, Hamilton. Janet Yellen’s coming for your hip-hop cred
Newly-minted Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is already a less problematic fave than Alexander Hamilton, an adulterer, elitist social climber and — despite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s protestations — a possible slave owner. But does a song about her slap? We now know: Yes. About a week ago, Marketplace, inspired by an off-handed remark from Joe Biden, asked…
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Culture If you can guess how HBO’s ‘Possessions’ ends, I’m scared of you
I’m reasonably confident you won’t be quick to solve the murder mystery at the heart of “Possessions.” If you do work out the exact whys and wherefores — before, say, episode four of six — I’m more than a bit worried about you. Debuting on HBO Max on Thursday, the French and Hebrew language thriller…
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Art An artist in exile talks Tu B’Shvat tarot and working from her childhood home
During the pandemic, Jessica Tamar Deutsch has been considering exile as she relearns how to paint. Specifically, she’s been thinking about the title character in “The Lost Princess,” a story by Rabbi Nachman, the mystic founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement, about a young woman who disappears from her home after displeasing her kingly father….
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Culture A 1939 satire critiques shtetl life — before it disappeared forever
Depictions of shtetl life — with their pogroms, close knit community and at times provincial ways — invite nostalgia and criticism all at once. Many of the shtetls’ most famous chroniclers in fiction were also moralists of the old world, critiquing the pieties and superstitions of the Pale of Settlement, often from the safe distance…
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