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 The Jewish and Jew-ish nominees for a strange 2020 Tonys
The 2020 Tony Awards, like weddings, vacations, work commutes and so much of the other stuff of life, went missing this summer. But, the show must go on — however belatedly. The nominees for this year’s ceremony were announced Thursday and like so much else in this strange new normal, they are incomplete but also…
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Culture ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ finds triumph in a moment of national shame
In a recent interview with Variety, Aaron Sorkin revealed how he’d script a speculative end to the Trump presidency. After the election, Sorkin predicted, in the face of a clear win for Biden, Trump will try to claim the Democrats cheated. But then a reckoning arrives. “For the first time, his Republican enablers march up…
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Culture ‘The Simpsons’ reminds us of Trump’s ‘disloyal’ Jews comments
While the question of cultural sensitivity and “The Simpsons” remains fluid, the show has always been attuned to the unique concerns of American Jewry. So it’s no real surprise that the forthcoming “Treehouse of Horror” special reminds us of the worst thing President Trump ever said about our voting trends. In the episode, which opens…
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Music Reclaiming Salome as seductress, murderess and misunderstood Jew
Most of what we know about Salome was written or imagined well after her alleged crime. Reviled as a seductress, who, some 2,000 years ago danced in front of her stepfather, Herod, before requesting the head of John the Baptist on a platter, Salome has had a sizable imprint on western culture in film, opera…
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Culture Gal Gadot’s Cleopatra casting has people mad for the wrong reasons
With the announcement that Gal Gadot is slated to play Egyptian monarch and doomed snake handler Cleopatra, the Israeli star has earned her crown as the queen of internet controversies. It’s been nearly seven full months since Gadot released the “Imagine” video, so she was due for another social media dustup. The news broke yesterday…
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Culture Pence’s debate fly has a Talmudic ancestor
Yesterday during the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate, a fly breached a plexiglass barrier amid a miasma of droplets and planted itself firmly on Vice President Mike Pence’s head for two full minutes as he nattered on about law enforcement. Surely you noticed, have seen the memes, the analysis and the instant Twitter account — but…
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Culture Long live Zayde Wisdom, the NHL’s new most Yiddishkeit player
A lot of our zaydes are right-wingers. Many are wise. But not like this. On Wednesday, Philadelphia’s hockey team, the Flyers, drafted a young man with the improbably old and Jewish name of Zayde Wisdom in their second round picks. It’s the second bit of good news this week for the 18-year-old Toronto native, who…
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Culture Did the Trump White House really echo ‘Triumph of the Will’?
In film theory, there’s something called the Kuleshov Effect, which teaches that juxtaposing images in sequence can suggest completely different reads of a shot. The typical example is an image of a blank-faced man placed alongside an image of a baby in a casket, a pairing that makes viewers interpret the man’s expression as sad…
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