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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Books
When Getting Girl Means Pretending To Be Transgender
Photo: Chloe Aftel Call it a boy-meets-girl-who-thinks-boy-was-born-a-girl story. In “Adam,” the debut novel from cult graphic memoirist Ariel Schrag, an awkward California teenager named Adam Freedman parachutes into an alien landscape of subcultures and identities when he joins his lesbian sister in Brooklyn for the summer. (Full disclosure: Schrag was featured in “Graphic Details: Confessional…
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12 Times Mick Jagger Spoke Better Hebrew Than You
Yes, the concert was undersold. And, while some said that it was just OK, that Jagger’s voice is showing its age (71, to be precise), that Keith Richards’ guitar licks were a tad uninspired, that the set list could have been better (perhaps too many relatively obscure songs), it doesn’t matter. Why? Because it turns…
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Why ‘Supermensch’ Shep Gordon Likes To Be a Plus-1
It took Mike Myers 10 years of begging for Shep Gordon to agree to a documentary about his life. The film, “Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon,” is Myers’s first go at directing, and he made a masterpiece. Gordon was the one who masterminded Alice Cooper’s image with stunts like throwing a live chicken on…
The Latest
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Watched Her Life Onstage
Photo: Ari Roth Despite having had a long, busy day at the US Supreme Court this past Monday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a point of attending a special performance of “Stars of David: Story to Song” in Washington that evening. The performance of the musical review celebrating the lives of Jewish public figures —…
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Steven Spielberg’s Niece Sings on ‘Voice’ Israel
Move over Pharrell Williams — “The Voice: Israel” has got the real big name: Spielberg. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jessica “Jessy” Katz, 25-year-old nice of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and daughter of Playmount Productions president Nancy Spielberg-Katz, will be performing on the show’s third season, which debuts on October 8. Katz won her…
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A (Jewish) Solar Solution to Maternal Mortality
The Jewish Women’s of New York Foundation’s 18th Benefit Luncheon at The Plaza honored writer-journalist Marilyn Berger, “Pulmonologist Dr. Marion Bergman, and investment maven Carol Eininger. Moderated by broadcast journalist Paula Zahn, the “Chai” celebration touted its [to date] over 100 organizations and $3 million in grants that have helped transform the lives of Israeli,…
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Pluralistic Shavuot at Tel Aviv City Hall
Photo courtesy of Beit Tefilah Israeli This Shavuot, the Tel Aviv Municipality broke new ground in the effort to develop a native-grown pluralistic form of Judaism that meets the spiritual and cultural needs of Israel’s non-Orthodox Jewish majority. In conjunction with the liberal, independent, egalitarian minyan Beit Tefilah Israeli, the local government of Israel’s cultural…
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Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones (in Tel Aviv)
On the off chance that you couldn’t shell out the NIS 700 (approx. $200) required or charter a private jet to attend the Rolling Stones concert in Tel Aviv tonight, the band has been nice enough to post a sneak peek to Instagram. Charlie Watts and Ron Wood were spotted at the Kotel in Jerusalem…
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Books David Bezmozgis Turning ‘Natasha’ Into Film
Photo: David Franco A decade after its publication, Canadian author David Bezmozgis is turning his debut short story collection, “Natasha and Other Stories,” into a film. As with “Victoria Day,” his first cinematic endeavor in 2009, Bezmozgis, a graduate of the University of Southern California’s film school, is both writing and directing the project. The…
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Did Photographer Garry Winogrand Exploit Nude Subjects?
Garry Winogrand, New York, 1968, gelatin silver print, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco Walking through the many rooms in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibit “Garry Winogrand” (through June 8), I was surprised to see several groups of transfixed boys. Winogrand, after all, was born in 1928 and died…
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2 Jewish Lawyers and Hitler’s ‘Butcher’ Share Stage
(Reuters) — The improbable tale of three music-loving lawyers linked to Ukraine – two of them Jews and one a Hitler aide known as the “Butcher of Poland” – has made it to the stage in a work premiered at the Hay Festival. “The Great Crimes” tells how the lives of Hersch Lauterpecht, who formulated…
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