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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An Erev Rosh Hashanah Martyr
Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942), the leading neo-Hasidic thinker in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, was for Hebrew and Yiddish-reading Jews what Martin Buber was for their more westernized German-reading brethren: the person who rendered the passionate religious life of Hasidism accessible to non-Orthodox Jews. A prolific writer and well-known lecturer, teacher and journalist, Zeitlin was one…
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Josh Radnor on Talmud and ‘Liberal Arts’
John Radnor is best known for his role as Ted Mosby, the central character in the hit CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” But that’s likely to change as he continues to flesh out his resume as a talented film writer and director. His first feature, “Happythankyoumoreplease” (2010) had, in his words, “a really…
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Fashion Week: Michael Kors’ Runway
Michael Kors displayed his newest line today at New York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. The designer was born in Long Island, N.Y. to Joan Hamburger, a Jewish former model, and her husband Karl Anderson, a college student. His mother remarried when he was five and the designer later changed his name to Michael David Kors. Kors…
The Latest
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Obama’s New Year’s Greeting to Oren
Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, was so pleased with a Rosh Hashanah greeting he received Monday from President Barack Obama that he photographed it and put it on Twitter. “I’m deeply appreciative of President @BarackObama’s personal letter for Rosh Hashanah,” the ambassador tweeted. The letter, typewritten on official White House stationery, was…
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Books Author Blog: Writing in a Foreign Language
Earlier this week, Shani Boianjiu explored the book of Jonah. 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: I was born and raised in Israel, and my novel, “The People of Forever Are…
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The Other Hebrew Hammer
Today’s boxing fans may know welterweight Cletus Seldin as the Hebrew Hammer. But it turns out he’s not the only one in the ring using that moniker. In fact, the other fighter, Mark Weinman, was using the alias — and winning bouts — before the 25-year-old Seldin was even born. And Weinman’s back at it…21…
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Watching YouTube With Itzhak Perlman
At Itzhak Perlman’s home on the East End of Long Island, the great violinist wakes up his MacBook to play back some khazones through a huge flat screen TV on the wall. As he flips through his iTunes collection and some YouTube videos, he recalls listening to such cantorial greats as Gershon Serota, Moshe Kousevittsky,…
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Fashion Week: Tory Burch’s Runway
Tory Burch’s clothing was on display today at New York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Burch, whose mother is Jewish, grew up in Philadelphia high society. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and worked for many designers, including Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang and Narciso Rodriguez. She now runs one of the country’s most successful women’s clothing brands,…
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Bieber’s Jewish Backer
When the Justin Bieber documentary “Never Say Never” hit last year, the Forward chatted with the superstar’s manager and “father figure,” Scooter Braun, about his own background — Holocaust-survivor grandparents, rough childhood in Greenwich, Conn., Hebrew name. Braun focuses a bit less on his Semitic side in a recent New Yorker article, which offers an…
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More Than Just ‘Radio Shmadio’
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Over the years, I’ve attended lots of symposia but never one that began with the ringing of chimes and concluded with a most hearty and prolonged round of applause. These two sounds, along with the sight of presenters swaying to the beat of “Yiddish Melodies in Swing” or singing…
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Books Randy Cohen on Being Secular and Getting Fired
For 614 weeks over a 12-year period, Randy Cohen was a latter-day Dear Abby. As author of The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, he provided a moral compass for readers facing quandaries large and small. He collected many of those efforts in a just-published book, “Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics…
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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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Music ‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history
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Culture She was my Hebrew school bully — and I finally learned what happened to her
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Opinion American Jews were played — now what?
In Case You Missed It
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Culture The Melania Trump Opera House won’t change hearts and minds — not even the president’s
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Fast Forward Columbia suspends, expels and revokes diplomas of students involved in Butler Library takeover
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Fast Forward Youth wing of the Democratic Party passes amendment opposing Israel’s ‘ongoing genocide in Gaza’
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Fast Forward Top leaders resign from Friends of the IDF amid internal reckoning
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