The Schmooze lies at the intersection of high and low culture. Here, the latest developments and trends in Jewish art, books, dance, film, music, media, television and theater are all assimilated into one handy pop culture blog.
The Schmooze
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Yuval Sharon’s ‘War Of The Worlds,’ DOC NYC And More To Read And Do This Weekend
It finally feels like fall, Taylor Swift’s new album is out, and if you’re like me, you’re reeling from the continued cascade of allegations of sexual assault and harassment being reported against an ever-increasing range of men in politics, Hollywood and the media. If you, like me, are resultantly in need of a mental break,…
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2017 Is Bad Enough For Jews Without Seeing Mel Gibson In ‘Daddy’s Home 2’
If comedy movies are a chance to escape from your troubles and enter a pleasant fantasy-world of laughter, “Daddy’s Home 2”, premiering today, may be a mistake. The film, starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as co-parents, with Gibson as Wahlberg’s rakish father, cost seventy million dollars to make. Trailers and press for the film,…
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Drake Explains His Large Collection Of Designer Purses
Drakes says the darnedest things. The 31 year-old Jewish rap king and all around guy-who-seems-like-the-grownup-version-of-that-kid-at-summer-camp-who-wouldn’t-stop-beatboxing is on the November cover of the Hollywood Reporter. In the interview with Tatiana Siegel, Drake said so many insane things that it became extremely difficult to pick a headline for this piece. Here are the Drake-st things we learned…
The Latest
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Will Smith Visited The Western Wall And Crashed A Bar Mitzvah
Art and life collided today when “Men In Black” star Will Smith visited Jerusalem, home of a very different kind of Men In Black, while filming Disney’s live-action “Aladdin” nearby in the Wadi Rum area in Jordan. You don’t see this too often! Actor and musician #WillSmith at the Western Wall (Kotel) in #Israel ??…
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Fran Drescher And Susie Essman Played Sisters On ‘Broad City’
“Don’t raise your voice to me, missy! I’m the person who taught you to insert a diaphragm, so lets just show a little respect!” Susie Essman screamed at Fran Drescher Noevember 8th on ‘Broad City.’ Things are looking up in 2017. The seventh episode of the politically fraught fourth season of “Broad City” offers a…
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The Boy Who Lived – On Top Of The Charts
In 2014 J.K. Rowling confirmed that there was a Jewish student at Hogwarts. Porpentina Goldstein was the Jewish heroine of Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.” In 2017 this publication published a Secret Jewish History of Harry Potter. Now the list of notable Jewish Harry Potter history must be expanded again,…
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Why Is American Pop Culture So Israel-Obsessed This Year?
When I was eighteen years old, I declared myself a ‘citizen of the world’. I was the classic secular Jewish teenager, raised in suburban Skokie, Illinois, and after I spent a semester in Jerusalem (more at home hanging in the Arab quarter than anywhere else), I found myself rejecting the ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ tropes….
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The ACLU Informs Taylor Swift That It Is Legal To Compare Her To Hitler
Ah, time. It’s a funny thing. On this day last year, so many of us were dragging Steinway-sized cases of champagne out of Costco in anticipation of a woman making history and changing the course of humankind. Today I am here to tell you that while Taylor Swift’s lawyer is VERY sure that Taylor Swift…
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Why Larry David’s Holocaust Jokes Didn’t Go Far Enough, And Four Comedians Whose Did
Almost exactly a year ago, I was in a synagogue in Brooklyn during Hebrew school dismissal one Sunday morning when I heard two 10-year-old girls chatting. Girl 1: I’m so MAD about the election. I don’t want there to be another Holocaust! Girl 2: They’ll make us shave our heads. Girl 1: I’d look terrible…
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The Secret Group Where People Recover From The Trauma Of Working For Harvey Weinstein
It’s no secret that Harvey Weinstein was not a great boss. Even if his employees managed to escape from their tenure without receiving a personal invite to Weinstein’s hotel room, it would seem that almost none of them were left without just a little bit of special Weinstein brand post-traumatic stress. Luckily, there is a…
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There Are Now Officially More Episodes Of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Than ‘Friends’
It’s easy, nowadays, to lose oneself in daydreams about the 1990s. It was an idyllic time, before “a balmy November morning” became part of our national vernacular, back when the Internet was used primarily to surf the “Space Jam” website, an era when 25-year-olds had jobs, not internships. It was also the decade that brought…
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Most Popular
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward Tucker Carlson calls for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army
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Opinion This German word explains Trump’s authoritarian impulses — and Hitler’s rise to power
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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
In Case You Missed It
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Culture Rabbi, get your gun
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Opinion How I got AI to create fake Nazi memos — and what that means for the future of antisemitism
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Fast Forward How the Jewish commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ could help a woman challenge Kentucky’s abortion ban in court
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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