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 There’s no way I can write a normal tribute to Woody Allen
Few still-living artists have tested the premise of the Death of the Author as much as Woody Allen — not so much for what he did, but what he’s accused of doing. While as a filmmaker, Allen, who turns a vital 85 today, has cemented as indelible a cinematic persona as Chaplin’s Tramp, in the…
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Culture Looking for the truth in Gaza — through a camera lens
Jehad al-Saftawi grew up in Gaza. The field in front of his boyhood home was used to launch rockets into Israel. As he approached manhood, he witnessed Israel rain down rockets of its own, leveling apartment blocks. To get the full picture of where he comes from, Saftawi insists on making both of these truths…
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Culture How America’s first Jew gave the turkey its name
Author’s Note: This article, detailing the mysterious life of America’s first Jew, was originally published in 2018. Among the interesting trivia about Luis de Torres’ journey from Spain is his purported naming of the North American turkey, a theory that, combined with his pilgrim-like voyage to escape persecution, make it appropriate Thanksgiving Day reading. For…
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Culture Monolith discovered in Utah wilderness has strong ‘2001’ energy
It’s a mystery some cinephiles may not want solved: Who — or what — placed a towering metal monolith in the middle of Utah desert? On Nov. 18, officers for Utah’s Department of Public Safety discovered the 10 to 12-foot tall edifice, which looks like a stainless steel prototype of Stanley Kubrick’s famously cryptic monolith…
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Culture A new box set of Yiddish films arrives – but only on Blu-Ray
Read this article in Yiddish. Today, 10 fully-restored classics of Yiddish cinema, featuring new commentary tracks and subtitles, will be available in a box set for the first time. But you may not be able to watch them. “This is coming out strictly on Blu-Ray,” said Allen Lewis Rickman, an actor and Yiddishist who wrote…
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Culture Why Bob Dylan preferred I.B. Singer over Jack Kerouac
One Singer story 'stayed in my head for months afterward,' Dylan said.
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Culture What Antony Blinken’s band says about how he’ll lead as Secretary of State
It is all but certain that Antony Blinken, former U.S. deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama, will be the nation’s top diplomat in the Biden administration. If nominated, he will be the third Jew to hold the post after Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. He will — we think — be the first to…
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Culture Nice to have you back, Sophia Loren; sorry about the movie
“The Life Ahead,” Sophia Loren’s long-awaited return to feature film, has one, central, ugly, thudding metaphor at its center. About a third of the way through the treacly Netflix drama about a Muslim orphan and his aged Jewish caretaker, protagonist Momo (newcomer Ibrahima Gueye) peers around his bed to see a CGI lioness striding towards…
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Culture Hidden in Central Park, a modest installation of Holocaust art — but what was it doing there?
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Yiddish אַ היסטאָרישע פֿאָטאָ וואָס פֿאַרקערפּערט די כּלי־זמר באַנײַונגA historic photo that encapsulates the klezmer revival
אין 2007 האָט דער מוזיקער יעל סטראָם פֿאַרזאַמלט די גדולים פֿון ביידע דורות לטובֿת אַ פֿאָטאָ אינעם איסט סײַד.
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Books How an ‘unlikely rabbi’ went from Korea to Colbert
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Yiddish אַ ליבע צװישן צװײ ייִדישע דיכטער אין ניו־יאָרק A love affair between two Yiddish poets in New York City
ראַשעל װעפּרינסקיס ראָמאַן „דאָס קרײצן פֿון די הענט“ אַנטפּלעקט די אינטימקייט פֿון דער ייִדישער באָהעמישער סבֿיבֿה מיט 100 יאָר צוריק
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