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 Wh-why was Lin-Manuel Miranda wearing a Star of David in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’?
Passion plays, which depict the trial and death of Jesus, have a nasty history. The Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany, for example, was famously propped up by the Nazis for its anti-Semitic caricatures of scheming priests. More recently, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” renewed charges of deicide against the Jewish people. But the…
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Culture ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘Mrs. Maisel’ lead a very Jewish Emmy outing for 2020
With 26 nominations, HBO’s “Watchmen,” a prescient superhero meditation on police violence and race in America, leads the field for the 2020 Emmys. It’s a mixed field, with a lot of recognition for actors of color and something at least approaching parity for male and female directors – though the writing categories are woefully lopsided….
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Culture The wonderful, whimsical, interfaith family of the Muppets
In August of 1960, a young man, his wife and their eight-week-old daughter drove into Detroit in a secondhand Rolls Royce. In a moment of mischief, the man asked his friend who was tagging along to take the wheel and drive him to the center of the Motor City. There, he cracked the moonroof and…
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Culture For Black British Jews, a walkout doesn’t solve Twitter’s anti-Semitism problem
Following a 48-hour anti-Semitic tirade from the UK musical artist Wiley, many British Jews are now participating in a two-day online walkout from Twitter under the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate. But for some Black British Jews, caught in the middle, the boycott falls short and points to larger challenges. “Wiley has more followers than there are Jews…
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Culture Remembering Regis Philbin’s ‘Bonkos’ time on ‘Seinfeld’
“I will never forget that silence, nor will I ever get over it,” Regis Philbin wrote in his 2011 memoir “How I Got This Way.” The moment, as Philbin describes it, was gutting. And to think it was all because of a show about nothing. Philbin, a talk show staple who began his on-camera career…
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Culture As Frog and Toad turn 50, a look at their most mortifying story
I recall with distinct mortification Toad’s striped, singlet bathing suit. Like so many early readers, I was in the cubbyholed realm of an elementary school classroom when I first encountered Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” books, the first of which was released 50 years ago this August. Their whimsical bucolic watercolors struck me then (or…
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Culture What’s the best New York Jewish book of all time?
Literary cities are many, but there’s only one New York. Now, philanthropists Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson are acknowledging that fact with a new award for books set in or about the Big Apple, which will come complete with a $50,000 prize. The news of the Gotham Book Prize arrives at a time when the…
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Culture Ukrainian hostage situation ends after president plugs Joaquin Phoenix film
So, who had “gunman releases 13 hostages after the Ukrainian president agrees to endorse an obscure 2005 documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix” on their 2020 bingo card? If you did, congrats. Yesterday morning in Lutsk, a city in Western Ukraine, a 44-year-old man named Maksym Kryvosh fired an automatic weapon before entering a bus and…
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