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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Wealthy Jewish New Yorkers Are Packing Heat
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been zealously fighting for gun control in his city, but it turns out that it’s not just criminals or your average pistol-packing Joe that Hizzoner has to worry about. In fact, quite a few prominent and super-wealthy residents of the Big Apple are packing heat. Many of them…
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Natalie Portman Is Bad at Sign Language
What’s some flubbed sign language when you’re one half of one of the hottest couples around? The answer is it’s no big deal. Although the press has pointed out that Natalie Portman, along with actor Johnny Depp, made some serious blunders as they signed the lyrics in Paul McCartney’s video for his new song, “My…
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A Jewish ‘Refuge,’ Virtually Recreated
Image courtesy of Freeman, Kaplan, Shiff When Mordecai Manuel Noah, the most influential Jew in the United States in the early 19th-century, tried to establish a refuge for Jews called “Ararat” on Grand Island, New York, he failed miserably. Efforts to establish the colony in 1825 went no further than a big kick-off event in…
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Books Author Blog: Do My Characters Need To Be Jewish?
Earlier this week, Debra Spark wrote about meeting Adin Steinsaltz. 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: Should I show my husband my work? My sister? My mother? Students sometimes ask me…
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Touring Yiddish Tel Aviv
Crossposted from Haaretz At the end of his visit to Israel in 1927, Sholem Asch, a leading Yiddish writer, wrote his impressions of Tel Aviv. “When you walk on the street, a Jew is walking in front of you; a Jew is walking behind you. Wherever you don’t look, Jewish eyes are watching you. It…
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To the Kibbutz and Back
Image Courtesy of First Run Features In 1909 and 1910 more Jewish settlers left Palestine than arrived, mainly because there was no work to be had. To reverse the trend, Zionist organizations purchased Arab land and gave it to immigrants. It was the birth of kibbutz — essentially communist collectives where everything was communally owned…
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Books Q&A: Accordion Author Marion Jacobson
Before Marion Jacobson discovered the accordion, she was a classical music critic for The Washington Post and an academic with a doctorate in ethnomusicology from New York University. But after wandering into Manhattan’s Main Squeeze accordion store in the fall of 2001, she knew she had found a new passion. So, needing to make space…
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Kunis and Kutcher: Could It Be?
Have you been starved for news about Jewish starlet Mila Kunis since her hammy evil-ballerina turn in 2010’s Black Swan? People.com has come to the rescue with a report today that the Ukraine-born Kunis “enjoyed some serious alone time together” last week with Ashton Kutcher, the dashing “Two and a Half Men” star and former…
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What Makes Jewish Film Accessible?
On May 15, Speakers’ Lab and the Forward will present a moderated town hall-style event called “Now What? The Future of New Jewish Culture” at the 14th Street Y in downtown New York City. In preparation for the event, each panelist was asked to respond to a question related to his or her work. The…
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From Brooklyn Jew to Austrian Blueblood
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree The Sunday New York Times is generally full of fascinating stories about this and that. This week’s paper featured the unusually choice tale of one Alan Z. Feuer, who, by dint of will and subterfuge, managed to transform himself from a Brooklyn-born Jewish kid into a socialite and an…
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Colonial Room With a View
Crossposted from Haaretz Standing in the sunken garden at the bottom of the former British High Commissioner’s headquarters in Armon Hanatziv, a neighborhood in southeast Jerusalem, it’s easy to imagine the cocktail parties once held here by British Mandate officials. Members of Arab and Jewish high society would gather with them under the arched portico,…
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News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
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Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
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Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
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Music After decades of waiting, we’re finally getting a Bob Dylan-Barbra Streisand duet
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish וואָס צוויי פּאָעטן האָבן געשריבן וועגן זייערע מאַמעסWhat these two Yiddish poets wrote about their mothers
מאַני לייב און ראַשעל וואַפּרינסקי, וואָס זענען יאָרן לאַנג געווען ראָמאַנטיש פֿאַרבונדן, באַשרײַבן ביידע דער מאַמעס פֿרומקייט.
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Fast Forward Brad Lander woos Jewish voters in NYC mayoral race with Talmud and Hebrew
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Fast Forward Trump administration condemns destructive pro-Palestinian protest at University of Washington
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Opinion 80 years after Germany surrendered, we’re still learning the real lessons of World War II
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