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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Q&A: Mentalist Marc Salem on Reading People
Mentalist Marc Salem knows how to read people. He begins and ends his latest show, “Mind Over Manhattan,” by assuring his audience that there’s nothing paranormal or supernatural about what he does. But it’s hard to reconcile those claims with the “magic” he performs onstage. How, wearing multiple blindfolds, does he identify items just by…
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Fashion Crowd Stunned by Flash Mob
As if fashion designer Stella McCartney weren’t busy enough creating two main fall/winter 2012 collections (one shown this past week in London and the other to be shown soon in Paris), designing Great Britain’s Olympic team uniform, and being mother to her four children, she also managed to pull off the most-talked-about event at London’s…
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Author Nathan Shaham to Receive Israel Prize
Crossposted from Haaretz Nathan Shaham, 87, playwright and author of more than 55 books will receive this year’s Israel Prize for Hebrew Literature and Poetry. Shaham has already received the prestigious Shlonsky Award, the Bialik Award, and Acum Award for lifetime achievement. In addition to his literary career Shaham served in several public positions including…
The Latest
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Yair Lapid Applies for Ph.D.
For Yair Lapid, things tend to work out well. He’s handsome, and everything he touches seems to turn to gold. He’s an author, screenwriter and one-time actor. Until recently he was a popular columnist for the best-selling newspaper Yediot Aharonot, but then he left to enter politics. Again, this move went super-smoothly — before he…
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Slideshow: The Sound of Painting
Painting can be a lot like playing music. Just as a jazz musician riffs on a standard, so too a painter can create a scene on canvas that evokes familiarity but still contains creative flourishes and emotional depth. That’s the notion behind Israeli artist Ishay Rossano’s latest series of paintings, first displayed in a solo…
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Out and About
The iconic Negev bookstore in Toronto is set to close. “A Sportman’s Guide to the Torah”? Of course there’s such a thing. Will Sacha Baron Cohen be allowed to attend the Oscars in character? Susan Goldman Rubin has won the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Sydney Taylor Book Award for her biography of Leonard Bernstein. Marc…
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Jews Rank Highest on Well-Being Index
There’s a Yiddish saying, “It’s hard to be a Jew.” But according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Jews enjoy the highest well-being of all religious groups. The research shows that the most religious members of all American religious groups have the highest well-being. Very religious Jews lead the way at 72.4%, with very religious Mormons…
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Watch Jonathan Ames Get Drunk on Prosecco
One of the recurring motifs in Jonathan Ames’s writing is his journeys on and off the wagon. Well, right now it looks like he’s definitely off. Appearing at the Writers Guild Awards on February 18, Ames delivered a coherent but rambling Prosecco-fueled speech. “If you put Prosecco in front of certain people it’s like cocaine,”…
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Attack of the 50-Foot Natalie Portman?
Natalie Portman is big everywhere in the world, including in Beirut, Lebanon, where she appears on a 50-foot billboard for Dior cosmetics. But not everyone is a fan. Algemeiner reports that anti-Israeli Lebanese bloggers are complaining about the actress’s image in their capital city. “Since each contact or with an Israeli occupation in Lebanon is…
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Cioran and the Jews Redux
As the centenary of the Romanian-born French writer Emil Cioran winds down, further attention honors the author who died in 1995, including “All Gall is Divided: The Aphorisms of E. M. Cioran” translated by Richard Howard, due out in March from Arcade Publishing, and a hefty collected works of over 1700 pages, out from Gallimard’s…
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Dancing Creatures in an Enchanted Forest
Crossposted from Haaretz Thread is a prominent theme of the dance performance “Bombyx Mori,” the Latin name for a species of silkworm. In addition to the physical thread that crisscrosses the enchanted forest the stage becomes, the production also creates threads of memory that recall other performances by the same company. The dog, like the…
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