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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Jewish Rapper Drake Scoops Grammy
The Jewish Canadian singer Drake won a Grammy Award, his first, for Rap Album of the Year. Also, the indie pop band fun. won Song of the Year with “We Are Young” and Best New Artist at the 55th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday in Los Angeles. Its lead singer, Jack Antonoff, is Jewish, and…
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Books Author Blog: Dreaming in Mother Tongues
Earlier, Hannah S. Pressman wrote about the idea behind “Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture” and when she first began to study Yiddish. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit:…
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Watch This Mashup of ’70s Israeli Disco
Kutiman is always up to something interesting. The Israeli musical artist (né Ophir Kutiel) is known for his inspired “ThruYOU” mashups of YouTube videos. Sitting at his home computer he is a cutting-edge composer, sampling snippets of sound from homemade movies to unite and blend disparate individuals from all corners of the globe into beautiful…
The Latest
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Beyonce’s Booty Didn’t Kill Super Bowl Lights
An electrical relay device, not anything to do with Beyonce’s scorching halftime show, caused the power outage that killed some of the lights at the Super Bowl last Sunday, power company Entergy Corp has said. With over 108 million Americans watching a game which was televised in more than 180 countries worldwide, about half the…
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Bar Refaeli’s Pucker Power
Who knew Bar Refaeli’s outré Super Bowl ad for Go Daddy would have such pucker power? HuffPo ran a piece on all the lucky guys the supermodel has smooched with, as well as another on nerdy Jesse Heiman who got to play tonsil hockey with her in the commercial. Hillel at Stanford University got in…
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Australia’s Oscar Entry Revisits German Past
“Lore,” short for Hannelore and the title of a new film opening February 8, is the name of a strong-willed and idealistic teenager who tries to lead her four young siblings to safety through the war-ravaged and dangerous landscape of a German nation defeated in 1945. Her physical trek triggers an inner journey for this…
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Ed Koch’s Spot on ‘Sex and the City’
The late ex-New York mayor Ed Koch loved the limelight. Entertainment Weekly recalled a number of hizzoner’s forays into pop culture, including acting in a cameo role in “The First Wives Club,” hosting “Saturday Night Live,” presiding as a judge on “The People’s Court,” and strutting the fashion runway on “Sex and the City.” David…
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Jewish ‘Downton Abbey’?
Fear not, those of you who were disappointed when it turned out that there was no yiddishkeit at Downton Abbey! It seems a kosher version of turn-of-the-20th-century upper crust British life is coming to the small screen in the near future. The U.K.’s Jewish Chronicle reports that Carnival Films, the production company behind the wildly…
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Gaza Goes Gangnam Style
Back in November, Israel Defense Forces reservists waiting on the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion whiled away their time producing an IDF parody of “Gangnam Style,” the infamous viral video by South Korean comedian and pop star Psy. Well, two can play that game. Now, a group of young men in Gaza have…
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Depression-Era Paintings Show Misery and Joy
“The Emigrants” a circa-1930 oil painting by Julius Bloch, is the signature image in a new exhibition at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, “Jewish Artists in America 1925-1945.” “It conveys the experience of immigrants, one that is intimately and deeply tied to this museum,” said Josh Perelman, NMAJH’s chief curator and…
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Sarajevo Hagaddah Will Not Be Displayed in NY
The centuries-old Sarajevo Haggadah will stay in Bosnia for the foreseeable future, despite an offer from the Metropolitan Museum in New York to display it on long-term loan. Jakob Finci, the president of the Jewish community in Bosnia, told JTA on Wednesday that in a meeting this week, the Bosnian Commission for the Preservation of…
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